I grant all this, and much more, if you will;
but, recollect, Athens was the home of the {15}
intellectual and beautiful; not of low mechanical
contrivances and material organization. Why
stop within your lodgings counting the rents in
your wall or the holes in your tiling, when nature
and art call you away? You must put up with{20}
such a chamber, and a table, and a stool, and a
sleeping board, anywhere else in the three
continents; one place does not differ from another
indoors; your magalia in Africa, or your grottoes
in Syria are not perfection. I suppose you did {25}
not come to Athens to swarm up a ladder, or to
grope about a closet: you came to see and to
hear, what hear and see you could not elsewhere.
What food for the intellect is it possible to
procure indoors, that you stay there looking about{30}
you? do you think to read there? where are your
books? do you expect to purchase books at
Athens—you are much out in your calculations.
True it is, we at this day, who live in the
nineteenth century, have the books of Greece as a
perpetual memorial; and copies there have been,{5}
since the time that they were written; but you
need not go to Athens to procure them, nor would
you find them in Athens. Strange to say, strange
to the nineteenth century, that in the age of Plato
and Thucydides, there was not, it is said, a{10}
bookshop in the whole place: nor was the book trade
in existence till the very time of Augustus.
Libraries, I suspect, were the bright invention of
Attalus or the Ptolemies;[42] I doubt whether
Athens had a library till the reign of Hadrian.{15}
It was what the student gazed on, what he heard,
what he caught by the magic of sympathy, not
what he read, which was the education furnished
by Athens.

He leaves his narrow lodging early in the{20}
morning; and not till night, if even then, will he
return. It is but a crib or kennel, in which
he sleeps when the weather is inclement or the
ground damp; in no respect a home. And he
goes out of doors, not to read the day's{25}
newspaper, or to buy the gay shilling volume, but to
imbibe the invisible atmosphere of genius, and
to learn by heart the oral traditions of taste.
Out he goes; and, leaving the tumble-down
town behind him, he mounts the Acropolis to
the right, or he turns to the Areopagus on the left.
He goes to the Parthenon to study the sculptures {5}
of Phidias; to the temple of the Dioscuri to see
the paintings of Polygnotus. We indeed take
our Sophocles or Æschylus out of our coat pocket;
but, if our sojourner at Athens would understand
how a tragic poet can write, he must betake{10}
himself to the theater on the south, and see and
hear the drama literally in action. Or let him go
westward to the Agora, and there he will hear
Lysias or Andocides pleading, or Demosthenes
haranguing. He goes farther west still, along the{15}
shade of those noble planes, which Cimon has
planted there; and he looks around him at the
statues and porticoes and vestibules, each by
itself a work of genius and skill, enough to be the
making of another city. He passes through the{20}
city gate, and then he is at the famous Ceramicus;
here are the tombs of the mighty dead; and here,
we will suppose, is Pericles himself, the most
elevated, the most thrilling of orators, converting a
funeral oration over the slain into a philosophical{25}
panegyric of the living.

Onwards he proceeds still; and now he has
come to that still more celebrated Academe,
which has bestowed its own name on Universities
down to this day; and there he sees a sight which{30}
will be graven on his memory till he dies. Many
are the beauties of the place, the groves, and the
statues, and the temple, and the stream of the
Cephissus flowing by; many are the lessons
which will be taught him day after day by teacher
or by companion; but his eye is just now arrested{5}
by one object; it is the very presence of Plato.
He does not hear a word that he says; he does
not care to hear; he asks neither for discourse
nor disputation; what he sees is a whole,
complete in itself, not to be increased by addition, and{10}
greater than anything else. It will be a point in
the history of his life; a stay for his memory to
rest on, a burning thought in his heart, a bond of
union with men of like mind, ever afterwards.
Such is the spell which the living man exerts on{15}
his fellows, for good or for evil. How nature
impels us to lean upon others, making virtue, or
genius, or name, the qualification for our doing
so! A Spaniard is said to have traveled to Italy,
simply to see Livy; he had his fill of gazing, and{20}
then went back again home. Had our young
stranger got nothing by his voyage but the sight
of the breathing and moving Plato, had he
entered no lecture room to hear, no gymnasium to
converse, he had got some measure of education,{25}
and something to tell of to his grandchildren.

But Plato is not the only sage, nor the sight of
him the only lesson to be learned in this
wonderful suburb. It is the region and the realm
of philosophy. Colleges were the inventions of{30}
many centuries later; and they imply a sort of
cloistered life, or at least a life of rule, scarcely
natural to an Athenian. It was the boast of the
philosophic statesman of Athens, that his
countrymen achieved by the mere force of nature and
the love of the noble and the great, what other{5}
people aimed at by laborious discipline; and all
who came among them were submitted to the
same method of education. We have traced our
student on his wanderings from the Acropolis to
the Sacred Way; and now he is in the region of{10}
the schools. No awful arch, no window of
many-colored lights marks the seats of learning there
or elsewhere; philosophy lives out of doors. No
close atmosphere oppresses the brain or inflames
the eyelid; no long session stiffens the limbs.{15}
Epicurus is reclining in his garden; Zeno looks
like a divinity in his porch; the restless Aristotle,
on the other side of the city, as if in antagonism
to Plato, is walking his pupils off their legs in his
Lyceum by the Ilyssus. Our student has{20}
determined on entering himself as a disciple of
Theophrastus, a teacher of marvelous popularity, who
has brought together two thousand pupils from
all parts of the world. He himself is of Lesbos;
for masters, as well as students, come hither from{25}
all regions of the earth—as befits a University.
How could Athens have collected hearers in such
numbers, unless she had selected teachers of such
power? it was the range of territory, which the
notion of a University implies, which furnished{30}
both the quantity of the one and the quality of
the other. Anaxagoras was from Ionia, Carneades
from Africa, Zeno from Cyprus, Protagoras from
Thrace, and Gorgias from Sicily. Andromachus
was a Syrian, Proæresius an Armenian, Hilarius
a Bithynian, Philiscus a Thessalian, Hadrian a{5}
Syrian. Rome is celebrated for her liberality in
civil matters; Athens was as liberal in
intellectual. There was no narrow jealousy, directed
against a Professor, because he was not an
Athenian; genius and talent were the qualifications;{10}
and to bring them to Athens, was to do homage
to it as a University. There was a brotherhood
and a citizenship of mind.

Mind came first, and was the foundation of the
academical polity; but it soon brought along with{15}
it, and gathered round itself, the gifts of fortune
and the prizes of life. As time went on, wisdom
was not always sentenced to the bare cloak of
Cleanthes; but, beginning in rags, it ended in
fine linen. The Professors became honorable{20}
and rich; and the students ranged themselves
under their names, and were proud of calling
themselves their countrymen. The University
was divided into four great nations, as the
mediæval antiquarian would style them; and in the{25}
middle of the fourth century, Proæresius was the
leader or proctor of the Attic, Hephæstion of
the Oriental, Epiphanius of the Arabic, and
Diophantus of the Pontic. Thus the Professors
were both patrons of clients, and hosts and{30}
proxeni of strangers and visitors, as well as masters
of the schools: and the Cappadocian, Syrian,
or Sicilian youth who came to one or other of
them, would be encouraged to study by his
protection, and to aspire by his example.

Even Plato, when the schools of Athens were{5}
not a hundred years old, was in circumstances
to enjoy the otium cum dignitate. He had a villa
out at Heraclea; and he left his patrimony to
his school, in whose hands it remained, not only
safe, but fructifying, a marvelous phenomenon in{10}
tumultuous Greece, for the long space of eight
hundred years. Epicurus too had the property
of the Gardens where he lectured; and these too
became the property of his sect. But in Roman
times the chairs of grammar, rhetoric, politics,{15}
and the four philosophies were handsomely
endowed by the State; some of the Professors
were themselves statesmen or high functionaries,
and brought to their favorite study senatorial
rank or Asiatic opulence.{20}

Patrons such as these can compensate to the
freshman, in whom we have interested ourselves,
for the poorness of his lodging and the turbulence
of his companions. In everything there is a
better side and a worse; in every place a{25}
disreputable set and a respectable, and the one is
hardly known at all to the other. Men come
away from the same University at this day, with
contradictory impressions and contradictory
statements, according to the society they have found{30}
there; if you believe the one, nothing goes on
there as it should be: if you believe the other,
nothing goes on as it should not. Virtue,
however, and decency are at least in the minority
everywhere, and under some sort of a cloud or
disadvantage; and this being the case, it is so{5}
much gain whenever an Herodes Atticus is found,
to throw the influence of wealth and station on
the side even of a decorous philosophy. A
consular man, and the heir of an ample fortune, this
Herod was content to devote his life to a{10}
professorship, and his fortune to the patronage of
literature. He gave the sophist Polemo about
eight thousand pounds, as the sum is calculated,
for three declamations. He built at Athens a
stadium six hundred feet long, entirely of white{15}
marble, and capable of admitting the whole
population. His theater, erected to the memory of
his wife, was made of cedar wood curiously carved.
He had two villas, one at Marathon, the place of
his birth, about ten miles from Athens, the other{20}
at Cephissia, at the distance of six; and thither
he drew to him the èlite, and at times the whole
body of the students. Long arcades, groves of
trees, clear pools for the bath, delighted and
recruited the summer visitor. Never was so{25}
brilliant a lecture room as his evening
banqueting hall; highly connected students from Rome
mixed with the sharp-witted provincial of Greece
or Asia Minor; and the flippant sciolist, and the
nondescript visitor, half philosopher, half tramp,{30}
met with a reception, courteous always, but suitable
to his deserts. Herod was noted for his
repartees; and we have instances on record of
his setting down, according to the emergency,
both the one and the other.

A higher line, though a rarer one, was that{5}
allotted to the youthful Basil. He was one of
those men who seem by a sort of fascination to
draw others around them even without wishing
it. One might have deemed that his gravity and
his reserve would have kept them at a distance;{10}
but, almost in spite of himself, he was the center
of a knot of youths, who, pagans as most of them
were, used Athens honestly for the purpose for
which they professed to seek it; and, disappointed
and displeased with the place himself, he seems{15}
nevertheless to have been the means of their
profiting by its advantages. One of these was
Sophronius, who afterwards held a high office in
the State: Eusebius was another, at that time
the bosom friend of Sophronius, and afterwards{20}
a Bishop. Celsus too is named, who afterwards
was raised to the government of Cilicia by the
Emperor Julian. Julian himself, in the sequel of
unhappy memory, was then at Athens, and known
at least to St. Gregory. Another Julian is also{25}
mentioned, who was afterwards commissioner of
the land tax. Here we have a glimpse of the better
kind of society among the students of Athens; and
it is to the credit of the parties composing it,
that such young men as Gregory and Basil, men{30}
as intimately connected with Christianity, as they
were well known in the world, should hold so high
a place in their esteem and love. When the two
saints were departing, their companions came
around them with the hope of changing their
purpose. Basil persevered; but Gregory relented,{5}
and turned back to Athens for a season.

Supply and Demand

It is most interesting to observe how the
foundations of the present intellectual greatness
of Europe were laid, and most wonderful to think
that they were ever laid at all. Let us consider{10}
how wide and how high is the platform of our
knowledge at this day, and what openings in
every direction are in progress—openings of
such promise, that, unless some convulsion of
society takes place, even what we have attained,{15}
will in future times be nothing better than a poor
beginning; and then on the other hand, let us
recollect that, seven centuries ago, putting aside
revealed truths, Europe had little more than that
poor knowledge, partial and uncertain, and at{20}
best only practical, which is conveyed to us by the
senses. Even our first principles now are beyond
the most daring conjectures then; and what has
been said so touchingly of Christian ideas as
compared with pagan, is true in its way and degree{25}
of the progress of secular knowledge also in the
seven centuries I have named.

"What sages would have died to learn,
[Is] taught by cottage dames."

Nor is this the only point in which the
revelations of science may be compared to the
supernatural revelations of Christianity. Though{5}
sacred truth was delivered once for all, and
scientific discoveries are progressive, yet there is
a great resemblance in the respective histories of
Christianity and of Science. We are accustomed
to point to the rise and spread of Christianity as{10}
a miraculous fact, and rightly so, on account of
the weakness of its instruments, and the appalling
weight and multiplicity of the obstacles which
confronted it. To clear away those obstacles
was to move mountains; yet this was done by{15}
a few poor, obscure, unbefriended men, and
their poor, obscure, unbefriended followers. No
social movement can come up to this marvel,
which is singular and archetypical, certainly;
it is a Divine work, and we soon cease to admire{20}
it in order to adore. But there is more in it
than its own greatness to contemplate; it is so
great as to be prolific of greatness. Those whom
it has created, its children who have become such
by a supernatural power, have imitated, in their{25}
own acts, the dispensation which made them
what they were; and, though they have not
carried out works simply miraculous, yet they have
done exploits sufficient to bespeak their own
unearthly origin, and the new powers which had{30}
come into the world. The revival of letters by
the energy of Christian ecclesiastics and laymen,
when everything had to be done, reminds us of
the birth of Christianity itself, as far as a work of
man can resemble a work of God.

Two characteristics, as I have already had{5}
occasion to say, are generally found to attend the
history of Science: first, its instruments have
an innate force, and can dispense with foreign
assistance in their work; and secondly, these
instruments must exist and must begin to act,{10}
before subjects are found who are to profit by
their action. In plainer language, the teacher is
strong, not in the patronage of great men, but
in the intrinsic value and attraction of what he
has to communicate; and next, he must come{15}
forward and advertise himself, before he can gain
hearers. This I have expressed before, in saying
that a great school of learning lived in demand and
supply, and that the supply must be before the
demand. Now, what is this but the very history{20}
of the preaching of the Gospel? who but the
Apostles and Evangelists went out to the ends
of the earth without patron, or friend, or other
external advantage which could insure their
success? and again, who among the multitude they{25}
enlightened would have called for their aid unless
they had gone to that multitude first, and offered
to it blessings which up to that moment it had
not heard of? They had no commission, they
had no invitation, from man; their strength lay{30}
neither in their being sent, nor in their being sent
for; but in the circumstances that they had that
with them, a Divine message, which they knew
would at once, when it was uttered, thrill through
the hearts of those to whom they spoke, and
make for themselves friends in any place,{5}
strangers and outcasts as they were when they first
came. They appealed to the secret wants and
aspirations of human nature, to its laden
conscience, its weariness, its desolateness, and its
sense of the true and the Divine; nor did they{10}
long wait for listeners and disciples, when they
announced the remedy of evils which were so real.

Something like this were the first stages of the
process by which in mediæval Christendom the
structure of our present intellectual elevation{15}
was carried forward. From Rome as from a
center, as the Apostles from Jerusalem, went
forth the missionaries of knowledge, passing to
and fro all over Europe; and, as Metropolitan
sees were the record of the presence of Apostles,{20}
so did Paris, Pavia, and Bologna, and Padua,
and Ferrara, Pisa and Naples, Vienna, Louvain,
and Oxford, rise into Universities at the voice of
the theologian or the philosopher. Moreover, as
the Apostles went through labors untold, by{25}
sea and land, in their charity to souls; so, if
robbers, shipwrecks, bad lodging, and scanty fare
are trials of zeal, such trials were encountered
without hesitation by the martyrs and confessors
of science. And as Evangelists had grounded{30}
their teaching upon the longing for happiness
natural to man, so did these securely rest their
cause on the natural thirst for knowledge: and
again as the preachers of Gospel peace had often
to bewail the ruin which persecution or
dissension had brought upon their nourishing colonies,{5}
so also did the professors of science often find or
flee the ravages of sword or pestilence in those
places, which they themselves perhaps in former
times had made the seats of religious, honorable,
and useful learning. And lastly, as kings and{10}
nobles have fortified and advanced the interests
of the Christian faith without being necessary
to it, so in like manner we may enumerate with
honor Charlemagne, Alfred, Henry the First of
England, Joan of Navarre, and many others, as{15}
patrons of the schools of learning, without being
obliged to allow that those schools could not have
progressed without such countenance.

These are some of the points of resemblance
between the propagation of Christian truth and{20}
the revival of letters; and, to return to the two
points, to which I have particularly drawn
attention, the University Professor's confidence in his
own powers, and his taking the initiative in the
exercise of them, I find both these distinctly{25}
recognized by Mr. Hallam in his history of Literature.
As to the latter point, he says, "The schools of
Charlemagne were designed to lay the basis of a
learned education, for which there was at that time
no sufficient desire"—that is, the supply was{30}
prior to the demand. As to the former: "In
the twelfth century," he says, "the impetuosity
with which men rushed to that source of what
they deemed wisdom, the great University of
Paris, did not depend upon academical privileges
or eleemosynary stipends, though these were{5}
undoubtedly very effectual in keeping it up. The
University created patrons, and was not created
by them"—that is, demand and supply were all
in all....

Bec, a poor monastery of Normandy, set up in {10}
the eleventh century by an illiterate soldier, who
sought the cloister, soon attracted scholars to its
dreary clime from Italy, and transmitted them
to England. Lanfranc, afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury, was one of these, and he found the{15}
simple monks so necessitous, that he opened a
school of logic to all comers, in order, says William
of Malmesbury, "that he might support his needy
monastery by the pay of the students." The
same author adds, that "his reputation went into{20}
the most remote parts of the Latin world, and
Bec became a great and famous Academy of
letters." Here is an instance of a
commencement without support, without scholars, in order
to attract scholars, and in them to find support.{25}
William of Jumièges, too, bears witness to the
effect, powerful, sudden, wide spreading, and
various, of Lanfranc's advertisement of himself.
The fame of Bec and Lanfranc, he says, quickly
penetrated through the whole world; and "clerks,{30}
the sons of dukes, the most esteemed masters of
the Latin schools, powerful laymen, high nobles,
flocked to him." What words can more strikingly
attest the enthusiastic character of the movement
which he began, than to say that it carried away
with it all classes; rich as well as poor, laymen as{5}
well as ecclesiastics, those who were in that day
in the habit of despising letters, as well as those
who might wish to live by them?...

The Strength and Weakness of Universities

We can have few more apposite illustrations
of at once the strength and weakness of what{10}
may be called the University principle, of what
it can do and what it cannot, of its power to
collect students, and its impotence to preserve and
edify them, than the history of the celebrated
Abelard. His name is closely associated with{15}
the commencement of the University of Paris;
and in his popularity and in his reverses, in the
criticisms of John of Salisbury on his method,
and the protest of St. Bernard against his
teaching, we read, as in a pattern specimen, what a{20}
University professes in its essence, and what it
needs for its "integrity." It is not to be supposed,
that I am prepared to show this here, as fully as
it might be shown; but it is a subject so
pertinent to the general object of these Essays, that it{25}
may be useful to devote even a few pages to it.

The oracles of Divine Truth, as time goes on,
do but repeat the one message from above which
they have ever uttered, since the tongues of fire
attested the coming of the Paraclete; still, as
time goes on, they utter it with greater force and{5}
precision, under diverse forms, with fuller
luminousness, and a richer ministration of thought
statement, and argument. They meet the
varying wants, and encounter the special resistance
of each successive age; and, though prescient of{10}
coming errors and their remedy long before, they
cautiously reserve their new enunciation of the
old Truth, till it is imperatively demanded. And,
as it happens in kings' cabinets, that surmises
arise, and rumors spread, of what is said in{15}
council, and is in course of preparation, and secrets
perhaps get wind, true in substance or in direction,
though distorted in detail; so too, before the
Church speaks, one or other of her forward
children speaks for her, and, while he does anticipate{20}
to a certain point what she is about to say or
enjoin, he states it incorrectly, makes it error
instead of truth, and risks his own faith in the
process. Indeed, this is actually one source, or
rather concomitant, of heresy, the presence of{25}
some misshapen, huge, and grotesque foreshadow
of true statements which are to come. Speaking
under correction, I would apply this remark to
the heresy of Tertullian or of Sabellius, which may
be considered a reaction from existing errors, and{30}
an attempt, presumptuous, and therefore unsuccessful,
to meet them with those divinely
appointed correctives which the Church alone can
apply, and which she will actually apply, when
the proper moment comes. The Gnostics boasted
of their intellectual proficiency before the time{5}
of St. Irenæus, St. Athanasius, and St.
Augustine; yet, when these doctors made their
appearance, I suppose they were examples of that
knowledge, true and deep, which the Gnostics
professed. Apollinaris anticipated the work of{10}
St. Cyril and the Ephesine Council, and became
a heresiarch in consequence; and, to come down
to the present times, we may conceive that
writers, who have impatiently fallen away from
the Church, because she would not adopt their{15}
views, would have found, had they but trusted
her, and waited, that she knew how to profit by
them, though she never could have need to
borrow her enunciations from them; for their
writings contained, so to speak, truth in the ore, truth{20}
which they themselves had not the gift to
disengage from its foreign concomitants, and safely
use, which she alone could use, which she would
use in her destined hour, and which became their
stone of stumbling simply because she did not{25}
use it faster. Now, applying this principle to
the subject before us, I observe, that, supposing
Abelard to be the first master of scholastic
philosophy, as many seem to hold, we shall have still
no difficulty in condemning the author, while we{30}
honor the work. To him is only the glory of
spoiling by his own self-will what would have
been done well and surely under the teaching
and guidance of Infallible Authority.

Nothing is more certain than that some ideas
are consistent with one another, and others{5}
inconsistent; and, again, that every truth must be
consistent with every other truth—hence, that
all truths of whatever kind form into one large
body of Truth, by virtue of the consistency
between one truth and another, which is a{10}
connecting link running through them all. The science
which discovers this connection is logic; and,
as it discovers the connection when the truths are
given, so, having one truth given and the
connecting principle, it is able to go on to ascertain{15}
the other. Though all this is obvious, it was
realized and acted on in the middle age with
a distinctness unknown before; all subjects of
knowledge were viewed as parts of one vast
system, each with its own place in it, and from{20}
knowing one, another was inferred. Not indeed
always rightly inferred, because the art might
be less perfect than the science, the instrument
than the theory and aim; but I am speaking of
the principle of the scholastic method, of which{25}
Saints and Doctors were the teachers—such
I conceive it to be, and Abelard was the ill-fated
logician who had a principal share in bringing it
into operation.

Others will consider the great St. Anselm and{30}
the school of Bec, as the proper source of Scholasticism;
I am not going to discuss the question;
anyhow, Abelard, and not St. Anselm, was the
Professor at the University of Paris, and it is
of Universities that I am speaking; anyhow,
Abelard illustrates the strength and the{5}
weakness of the principle of advertising and
communicating knowledge for its own sake, which I have
called the University principle, whether he is,
or is not, the first of scholastic philosophers or
scholastic theologians. And, though I could not{10}
speak of him at all without mentioning the
subject of his teaching, yet, after all, it is of him and
of his teaching itself, that I am going to speak,
whatever that might be which he actually taught.

Since Charlemagne's time the schools of Paris{15}
had continued, with various fortunes, faithful, as
far as the age admitted, to the old learning, as
other schools elsewhere, when, in the eleventh
century, the famous school of Bec began to
develop the powers of logic in forming a new{20}
philosophy. As the inductive method rose in
Bacon, so did the logical in the mediæval
schoolmen; and Aristotle, the most comprehensive
intellect of Antiquity, as the one who had
conceived the sublime idea of mapping the whole{25}
field of knowledge, and subjecting all things to
one profound analysis, became the presiding
master in their lecture halls. It was at the end
of the eleventh century that William of
Champeaux founded the celebrated Abbey of St.{30}
Victor under the shadow of St, Geneviève, and by
the dialectic methods which he introduced into his
teaching, has a claim to have commenced the
work of forming the University out of the Schools
of Paris. For one at least, out of the two
characteristics of a University, he prepared the way;{5}
for, though the schools were not public till after
his day, so as to admit laymen as well as clerks,
and foreigners as well as natives of the place, yet
the logical principle of constructing all sciences
into one system, implied of course a recognition{10}
of all the sciences that are comprehended in it.
Of this William of Champeaux, or de Campellis,
Abelard was the pupil; he had studied the
dialectic art elsewhere, before he offered himself for
his instructions; and, in the course of two years,{15}
when as yet he had only reached the age of
twenty-two, he made such progress, as to be
capable of quarreling with his master, and
setting up a school for himself.

This school of Abelard was first situated in{20}
the royal castle of Melun; then at Corbeil, which
was nearer to Paris, and where he attracted to
himself a considerable number of hearers. His
labors had an injurious effect upon his health;
and at length he withdrew for two years to his{25}
native Britanny. Whether other causes coöperated
in this withdrawal, I think, is not known;
but, at the end of the two years, we find him
returning to Paris, and renewing his attendance
on the lectures of William, who was by this time{30}
a monk. Rhetoric was the subject of the lectures
he now heard; and after a while the pupil
repeated with greater force and success his
former treatment of his teacher. He held a
public disputation with him, got the victory,
and reduced him to silence. The school of{5}
William was deserted, and its master himself became
an instance of the vicissitudes incident to that
gladiatorial wisdom (as I may style it) which was
then eclipsing the old Benedictine method of the
Seven Arts. After a time, Abelard found his{10}
reputation sufficient to warrant him in setting
up a school himself on Mount St. Geneviève;
whence he waged incessant war against the
unwearied logician, who by this time had rallied
his forces to repel the young and ungrateful{15}
adventurer who had raised his hand against him.

Great things are done by devotion to one idea;
there is one class of geniuses, who would never
be what they are, could they grasp a second.
The calm philosophical mind, which{20}
contemplates parts without denying the whole, and the
whole without confusing the parts, is notoriously
indisposed to action; whereas single and simple
views arrest the mind, and hurry it on to carry
them out. Thus, men of one idea and nothing{25}
more, whatever their merit, must be to a certain
extent narrow-minded; and it is not wonderful
that Abelard's devotion to the new philosophy
made him undervalue the Seven Arts out of which
it had grown. He felt it impossible so to honor{30}
what was now to be added, as not to dishonor
what existed before. He would not suffer the
Arts to have their own use, since he had found a
new instrument for a new purpose. So he
opposed the reading of the Classics. The monks
had opposed them before him; but this is little{5}
to our present purpose; it was the duty of men,
who abjured the gifts of this world on the
principle of mortification, to deny themselves
literature just as they would deny themselves
particular friendships or figured music. The doctrine{10}
which Abelard introduced and represents was
founded on a different basis. He did not
recognize in the poets of antiquity any other merit
than that of furnishing an assemblage of elegant
phrases and figures; and accordingly he asks{15}
why they should not be banished from the city
of God, since Plato banished them from his own
commonwealth. The animus of this language is
clear, when we turn to the pages of John of
Salisbury and Peter of Blois, who were champions of{20}
the ancient learning. We find them complaining
that the careful "getting up," as we now call it,
"of books," was growing out of fashion. Youths
once studied critically the text of poets or
philosophers; they got them by heart; they analyzed{25}
their arguments; they noted down their fallacies;
they were closely examined in the matters which
had been brought before them in lecture; they
composed. But now, another teaching was
coming in; students were promised truth in a{30}
nutshell; they intended to get possession of the sum-total
of philosophy in less than two or three
years; and facts were apprehended, not in their
substance and details, by means of living and,
as it were, personal documents, but in dead
abstracts and tables. Such were the{5}
reclamations to which the new Logic gave occasion.

These, however, are lesser matters; we have
a graver quarrel with Abelard than that of his
undervaluing the Classics. As I have said, my
main object here is not what he taught, but why{10}
and how, and how he lived. Now it is certain
his activity was stimulated by nothing very high,
but something very earthly and sordid. I grant
there is nothing morally wrong in the mere desire
to rise in the world, though Ambition and it are{15}
twin sisters. I should not blame Abelard merely
for wishing to distinguish himself at the
University; but when he makes the ecclesiastical
state the instrument of his ambition, mixes up
spiritual matters with temporal, and aims at a{20}
bishopric through the medium of his logic, he
joins together things incompatible, and cannot
complain of being censured. It is he himself,
who tells us, unless my memory plays me false,
that the circumstance of William of Champeaux{25}
being promoted to the see of Chalons, was an
incentive to him to pursue the same path with an
eye to the same reward. Accordingly, we next
hear of his attending the theological lectures of
a certain master of William's, named Anselm, an{30}
old man, whose school was situated at Laon. This
person had a great reputation in his day; John
of Salisbury, speaking of him in the next
generation, calls him the doctor of doctors; he had been
attended by students from Italy and Germany;
but the age had advanced since he was in his{5}
prime, and Abelard was disappointed in a teacher,
who had been good enough for William. He left
Anselm, and began to lecture on the prophet
Ezekiel on his own resources.

Now came the time of his great popularity,{10}
which was more than his head could bear; which
dizzied him, took him off his legs, and whirled
him to his destruction. I spoke in my foregoing
Chapter of those three qualities of true wisdom,
which a University, absolutely and nakedly{15}
considered, apart from the safeguards which
constitute its integrity, is sure to compromise.
Wisdom, says the inspired writer, is desursum, is
pudica, is pacifica, "from above, chaste,
peaceable." We have already seen enough of Abelard's{20}
career to understand that his wisdom, instead of
being "pacifica," was ambitious and contentious.
An Apostle speaks of the tongue both as a blessing
and as a curse. It may be the beginning of a fire,
he says, a "Universitas iniquitatis"; and alas!{25}
such did it become in the mouth of the gifted
Abelard. His eloquence was wonderful; he
dazzled his contemporaries, says Fulco, "by the
brilliancy of his genius, the sweetness of his
eloquence, the ready flow of his language, and the{30}
subtlety of his knowledge." People came to
him from all quarters—from Rome, in spite of
mountains and robbers; from England, in spite
of the sea; from Flanders and Germany; from
Normandy, and the remote districts of France;
from Angers and Poitiers; from Navarre by the{5}
Pyrenees, and from Spain, besides the students
of Paris itself; and among those, who sought his
instructions now or afterwards, were the great
luminaries of the schools in the next generation.
Such were Peter of Poitiers, Peter Lombard, John{10}
of Salisbury, Arnold of Brescia, Ivo, and Geoffrey
of Auxerre. It was too much for a weak head
and heart, weak in spite of intellectual power;
for vanity will possess the head, and worldliness
the heart, of the man, however gifted, whose{15}
wisdom is not an effluence of the Eternal Light.

True wisdom is not only "pacifica," it is
"pudica"; chaste as well as peaceable. Alas for
Abelard! a second disgrace, deeper than
ambition, is his portion now. The strong man—the{20}
Samson of the schools in the wildness of his course,
the Solomon in the fascination of his
genius—shivers and falls before the temptation which
overcame that mighty pair, the most excelling
in body and in mind.{25}

In a time when Colleges were unknown, and the
young scholar was commonly thrown upon the
dubious hospitality of a great city, Abelard might
even be thought careful of his honor, that he
went to lodge with an old ecclesiastic, had not{30}
his host's niece Eloisa lived with him. A more
subtle snare was laid for him than beset the
heroic champion or the all-accomplished monarch of
Israel; for sensuality came upon him under the
guise of intellect, and it was the high mental
endowments of Eloisa, who became his pupil,{5}
speaking in her eyes, and thrilling on her tongue,
which were the intoxication and the delirium of
Abelard....

He is judged, he is punished; but he is not
reclaimed. True wisdom is not only "pacifica,"{10}
not only "pudica;" it is "desursum" too. It is
a revelation from above; it knows heresy as
little as it knows strife or license. But Abelard,
who had run the career of earthly wisdom in two
of its phases, now is destined to represent its{15}
third.

It is at the famous Abbey of St. Denis that we
find him languidly rising from his dream of sin,
and the suffering that followed. The bad dream
is cleared away; clerks come to him, and the{20}
Abbot begging him to lecture still, for love
now, as for gain before. Once more his school is
thronged by the curious and the studious; but
at length a rumor spreads, that Abelard is
exploring the way to some novel view on the{25}
subject of the Most Holy Trinity. Wherefore is
hardly clear, but about the same time the monks
drive him away from the place of refuge he had
gained. He betakes himself to a cell, and thither
his pupils follow him. "I betook myself to a{30}
certain cell," he says, "wishing to give myself to
the schools, as was my custom. Thither so great
a multitude of scholars flocked, that there was
neither room to house them, nor fruits of the
earth to feed them," such was the enthusiasm of
the student, such the attraction of the teacher,{5}
when knowledge was advertised freely, and its
market opened.

Next he is in Champagne, in a delightful
solitude near Nogent in the diocese of Troyes. Here
the same phenomenon presents itself, which is{10}
so frequent in his history. "When the scholars
knew it," he says, "they began to crowd thither
from all parts; and, leaving other cities and
strongholds, they were content to dwell in the
wilderness. For spacious houses they framed for{15}
themselves small tabernacles, and for delicate food they
put up with wild herbs. Secretly did they
whisper among themselves: 'Behold, the whole
world is gone out after him!' When, however,
my Oratory could not hold even a moderate{20}
portion of them, then they were forced to enlarge
it, and to build it up with wood and stone."
He called the place his Paraclete, because it had
been his consolation.

I do not know why I need follow his life further.{25}
I have said enough to illustrate the course of one,
who may be called the founder, or at least the first
great name, of the Parisian Schools. After the
events I have mentioned he is found in Lower
Britanny; then, being about forty-eight years of{30}
age, in the Abbey of St. Gildas; then with St.
Geneviève again. He had to sustain the fiery
eloquence of a Saint, directed against his novelties;
he had to present himself before two Councils;
he had to burn the book which had given offense
to pious ears. His last two years were spent at{5}
Clugni on his way to Rome. The home of the
weary, the hospital of the sick, the school of the
erring, the tribunal of the penitent, is the city
of St. Peter. He did not reach it; but he is
said to have retracted what had given scandal in{10}
his writings, and to have made an edifying end.
He died at the age of sixty-two, in the year of
grace 1142.

In reviewing his career, the career of so great
an intellect so miserably thrown away, we are{15}
reminded of the famous words of the dying
scholar and jurist, which are a lesson to us all,
"Heu, vitam perdidi, operosè nihil agendo." A
happier lot be ours!

IV. MISCELLANEOUS

Poetry, with Reference to Aristotle's Poetics

Poetry, according to Aristotle, is a
representation of the ideal. Biography and history
represent individual characters and actual facts;
poetry, on the contrary, generalizing from the
phenomenon of nature and life, supplies us with{5}
pictures drawn, not after an existing pattern,
but after a creation of the mind. Fidelity is the
primary merit of biography and history; the
essence of poetry is fiction. "Poesis nihil aliud
est," says Bacon, "quam historiæ imitatio ad{10}
placitum." It delineates that perfection which
the imagination suggests, and to which as a
limit the present system of Divine Providence
actually tends. Moreover, by confining the attention
to one series of events and scene of action, it{15}
bounds and finishes off the confused luxuriance
of real nature; while, by a skillful adjustment of
circumstances, it brings into sight the connection
of cause and effect, completes the dependence of
the parts one on another, and harmonizes the{20}
proportions of the whole. It is then but the type
and model of history or biography, if we may be
allowed the comparison, bearing some resemblance
to the abstract mathematical formulæ of physics,
before they are modified by the contingencies of
atmosphere and friction. Hence, while it recreates
the imagination by the superhuman loveliness of
its views, it provides a solace for the mind broken{5}
by the disappointments and sufferings of actual
life; and becomes, moreover, the utterance of
the inward emotions of a right moral feeling,
seeking a purity and a truth which this world
will not give.{10}

It follows that the poetical mind is one full of
the eternal forms of beauty and perfection; these
are its material of thought, its instrument and
medium of observation; these color each
object to which it directs its view. It is called{15}
imaginative, or creative, from the originality and
independence of its modes of thinking, compared
with the commonplace and matter-of-fact
conceptions of ordinary minds which are fettered
down to the particular and individual. At the{20}
same time it feels a natural sympathy with
everything great and splendid in the physical and
moral world; and selecting such from the mass
of common phenomena, incorporates them, as it
were, into the substance of its own creations.{25}
From living thus in a world of its own, it speaks
the language of dignity, emotion, and refinement.
Figure is its necessary medium of communication
with man; for in the feebleness of ordinary words
to express its ideas, and in the absence of terms of{30}
abstract perfection, the adoption of metaphorical
language is the only poor means allowed it for
imparting to others its intense feelings. A metrical
garb has, in all languages, been appropriated to
poetry—it is but the outward development of
the music and harmony within. The verse, far{5}
from being a restraint on the true poet, is the
suitable index of his sense, and is adopted by his
free and deliberate choice. We shall presently
show the applicability of our doctrine to the
various departments of poetical composition;{10}
first, however, it will be right to volunteer an
explanation which may save it from much
misconception and objection. Let not our notion
be thought arbitrarily to limit the number of
poets, generally considered such. It will be{15}
found to lower particular works, or parts of
works, rather than the authors themselves;
sometimes to disparage only the vehicle in which
the poetry is conveyed. There is an ambiguity
in the word "poetry," which is taken to signify{20}
both the gift itself, and the written composition
which is the result of it. Thus there is an
apparent, but no real, contradiction in saying a poem
may be but partially poetical; in some passages
more so than in others; and sometimes not{25}
poetical at all. We only maintain, not that the
writers forfeit the name of poet who fail at times
to answer to our requisitions, but that they are
poets only so far forth, and inasmuch as they do
answer to them. We may grant, for instance,{30}
that the vulgarities of old Phœnix in the ninth
Iliad, or of the nurse of Orestes in the Choëphoræ,
are in themselves unworthy of their respective
authors, and refer them to the wantonness of
exuberant genius; and yet maintain that the
scenes in question contain much incidental poetry.{5}
Now and then the luster of the true metal catches
the eye, redeeming whatever is unseemly and
worthless in the rude ore; still the ore is not the
metal. Nay, sometimes, and not unfrequently in
Shakspeare, the introduction of unpoetical{10}
matter may be necessary for the sake of relief, or as
a vivid expression of recondite conceptions, and,
as it were, to make friends with the reader's
imagination. This necessity, however, cannot
make the additions in themselves beautiful and{15}
pleasing. Sometimes, on the other hand, while
we do not deny the incidental beauty of a poem,
we are ashamed and indignant on witnessing the
unworthy substance in which that beauty is
embedded. This remark applies strongly to the{20}
immoral compositions to which Lord Byron
devoted his last years.

Now to proceed with our proposed investigation.

1. We will notice descriptive poetry first.{25}
Empedocles wrote his physics in verse, and
Oppian his history of animals. Neither were
poets—the one was an historian of nature, the
other a sort of biographer of brutes. Yet a poet
may make natural history or philosophy the{30}
material of his composition. But under his hands
they are no longer a bare collection of facts or
principles, but are painted with a meaning,
beauty, and harmonious order not their own.
Thomson has sometimes been commended for
the novelty and minuteness of his remarks upon{5}
nature. This is not the praise of a poet, whose
office rather is to represent known phenomena in
a new connection or medium. In L'Allegro and
Il Penseroso the poetical magician invests the
commonest scenes of a country life with the hues,{10}
first of a cheerful, then of a pensive imagination.
It is the charm of the descriptive poetry of a
religious mind, that nature is viewed in a moral
connection. Ordinary writers, for instance,
compare aged men to trees in autumn—a gifted{15}
poet will in the fading trees discern the fading
men.[43] Pastoral poetry is a description of
rustics, agriculture, and cattle, softened off and
corrected from the rude health of nature. Virgil,
and much more Pope and others, have run into{20}
the fault of coloring too highly; instead of
drawing generalized and ideal forms of shepherds, they
have given us pictures of gentlemen and beaux.

Their composition may be poetry, but it is not
pastoral poetry.{25}