less famous men, whose names have been preserved to us by Plato, passed from city to city in ancient Greece, teaching and disputing. Some, we are told, amassed considerable fortunes; while one and all gathered about them the restless brains of their generation, who carried through the land the fame of their doctrines and the brilliance of their rhetoric. De Rémusat’s drama opens in the cloister of Nôtre-Dame, where a number of scholars are assembled to hear a lecture by Guillaume de Champeaux. The master has not yet arrived; and the first scene is passed in what the undergraduates of the nineteenth century call chaff. Finally, the great lecturer makes his appearance; the scholars crowd around him, and he proceeds to expound his thesis of the reality of Universals, or the substantiality of abstract ideas. In a word, he is the champion of Realism as opposed to Nominalism, and maintains, for example, that Man exists as really and essentially as any individual man, and that Humanity is not a mere name or intellectual abstraction, but just as much an entity as a building composed of so many stones. At the end of his discourse he says, “Are you all satisfied, or is anyone present harassed by doubt? If so, let him speak, and I will answer him.” Abelard rises. He is unknown equally to master and to scholars, but he soon enchains attention by the vigor of his dialectic. He involves the lecturer in a series of contradictions, and ends by establishing his proposition that Universals are neither realities, nor mere names, but Conceptions, and by winning over the whole class to his views. In vain Guillaume de Champeaux pronounces the word heresy, and points out that Abelard bases his theories on the dangerous foundation of human reason. The remainder of the First Act, which is entitled “La Philosophie,” is devoted to depicting the supremacy gradually obtained by the brilliant young Breton over the students of Nôtre-Dame, until, Guillaume de Champeaux finally abandoned by his scholars, Abelard can exclaim, “_Maintenant l’Ecole de Paris, c’est moi!_” The Second Act, the scene of which is laid at Laon a year later, is headed “La Théologie”; and in it Abelard acquires over Anselme of Laon, in theological controversy, a victory analogous to that he had previously won over Guillaume de Champeaux in the realm of metaphysics. The audience is the same, for the students of Nôtre-Dame have followed Abelard to Laon; and the same is the weapon with which his triumph is achieved. “When theology,” he exclaims in the course of a warm disputation with Anselme, “is not seconded by dialectic, vainly does it knock at the door of the spirit; it is reason that holds the key, and opens to the truth.” Anselme replies with anathemas. Then Abelard bursts out:—