=Abelard’s Rationalism.――The Relation between Reason and Dogma.= The proud, self-reliant, self-conscious Abelard could be nothing else than a rationalist. He was the type of the controversial metaphysician. He was the fighting dialectician,――intolerant of restraint, devoid of respect for authority, seeking the prize of victory at any cost. Erigena, as a mystic, harmonized reason and dogma because they are equal; Anselm, as an orthodox scholastic, harmonized them because reason is subordinate to dogma and conforms to it; Abelard, as a rationalist, harmonized reason and dogma because dogma is subordinate to reason and conforms to reason. To Anselm reason merely clarifies dogma; to Abelard “dogma is only a provisional substitute for reason.” Anselm never questions dogma, while Abelard calls dogma before the bar of the reason and then acts as dogma’s advocate. We must try all dogma in court, and, contrary to modern legal practice, we must doubt it until it proves its innocence. For “it is through doubt we come to investigation, and through investigation to the truth.” A good example of Abelard’s attitude appears in his _Sic et Non_, a treatise in which he sets the views of the Fathers over against one another so that the reason may decide upon the truth. Another example of his method appears in his examination of the doctrine of the Trinity, and in the third book of _Christian Theology_ he cites twenty-three objections and in the fourth book answers them. This rationalizing spirit led him to advocate the doctrine of free-will, to place the responsibility of moral conduct and theoretical belief upon the individual, to regard Christianity as the consummation of all religions and not as the presentation of anything new. If in these discussions he was more brilliant than profound, if he wrote upon many questions without solving any, if the weight of his personality could not prevail in his controversies, it was because the science of the twelfth century offered him little empirical support against the actual power of the church and the mighty inward strength of faith of the people. What means had Abelard to support his position that rational science should determine faith? Nothing but the hollow methods of scholastic logic and the traditions of the church――the very things against which he was rebelling. Abelard set for himself a problem, but he lacked the means of its solution. It was, however, a problem that has never vanished from the memory of the European peoples.