r the professor to encourage discussions with the
students and to overwhelm them with the weight of his wisdom and the
acuteness of his reasoning. In this fashion Guillaume had long
triumphed, and had, we may fancy, acquired no little of that dogmatic
habit of mind which is fostered by unchallenged teaching. About the year
1100 his ascendency was seriously threatened by a young Breton, scarcely
yet a man, who had come to his school as a student and had had the
temerity to overcome him in argument. This was Pierre Abelard, soon
famous as a logician, philosopher, and theologian, now remembered
chiefly because of his connection with the fair and noble Heloise.
Abelard was born at Pallet, or Palais, not far from Nantes. He was the
eldest son of a family of some distinction, and his father, Berenger,
was determined to give his son an education in keeping with his own
knightly rank. Berenger himself was better educated than most of the
gentlemen of his class, and there seems to have been a decided leaning
to devoutness in the family, since both Berenger and his wife, Lucie,
took monastic vows later in life. At any rate, Pierre, after a taste of
learning, determined to devote himself entirely to the pursuit of
knowledge. Let us see how he tells this part of his own story. "The
progress that I made in learning attached me to its pursuit with an ever
increasing ardor, and such was the charm that it exercised over my mind
that, renouncing the glory of arms, my own heritage, my own privileges
as eldest son, I abandoned forever the camp of Mars to take refuge in
the bosom of Minerva. Preferring the art of dialectic to all the other
teachings of philosophy, I exchanged the arms of war for those of logic,
and sacrificed trophies of the battlefield for the joys of contest in
argument. I took to travelling from province to province, going wherever
I heard that the study of this art received special honor, and always
engaging in argument, like a veritable emulator of the Peripatetics."

In this way, Abelard, still under twenty, came to the school of
Guillaume de Champeaux. Received at first with honor, as an intelligent
pupil, Abelard remained some time, perhaps two years. But his restless,
inquisitive, and, above all, rational mind could not accept calmly what
seemed to it untrue. Abelard, a mere boy, dared to dispute with his
master, Guillaume, and, what is far worse, to get the better of
arguments on Guillaume's own peculiar subject.