ned under a fair show to serve the
purpose of unbelief? Or is it merely an instance of the awakening of the
spirit of inquiry, the free criticism exercised by nominalism, the desire
to prove all dogmas by reason? In other words, was the freethinking of
Abelard rationalism, or was it merely Protestantism and theological
criticism?

These questions have met with different answers. The Benedictine editors,
viewing his condemnation by St. Bernard as parallel to that of the
biblical critic R. Simon(273) by Bossuet, declined to publish the
manuscript of his work.(274) More recent inquirers, especially the
philosophical critic Cousin, have regarded Abelard with a favourable eye.
They consider his treatises merely to be a provisional scepticism,
fortifying the mind against premature solutions. Some would even claim him
as an early protestant, as the first of the line of men whose spirits,
while fretting under the dogmatic teaching or the political centralization
of the Western church, have unhesitatingly bowed before the authority of
scripture.(275) Possibly these several views contain elements of truth.
Abelard's character was complex, and the purpose of his book equally so.
He embodied a movement, and experience had not yet taught men to
distinguish in it the boundaries which separated the provinces of free
thought. The argument in favour of scepticism drawn from the form of his
work seems unfair. The statement of a series of paradoxes is lawful, if a
solution of them be offered, or an explanation of the reason why a
solution is impossible. The disputative, dialectical tone which assists in
the work was the ordinary mode of instruction in the mediaeval
universities, and finds a parallel in the method of thought observable in
other ages. Abelard's statement of paradoxes, of an unsolved mass of
contradictions, recalls, for example, the early paradoxes on motion which
Zeno presented for the purpose of compelling acquiescence in the Eleatic
teaching,(276) or the series of antinomies which Kant has given, as
problems insoluble theoretically, but capable of harmony when viewed on
the moral side.(277) In truth it is the mark, either, as in one of these
cases, of the first awakening of the mind to curiosity; or, as in the
other, of the last limit at which curiosity is compelled to pause.
Abelard's method is like that which is observable in Socrates, and in
those early dialogues of his disciple Plato, in which the pupil is working
in