It will appear presently that Bernard was less concerned with the details of Abélard’s teaching than with his spirit. He, however, dwells on them for controversial purposes, and they are certainly full of interest for the modern mind. The point will be more fully developed in a supplementary chapter. For the moment a brief glance at them will be instructive enough. They differ a little in Bernard’s letter from the list given by William of St. Thierry, but one cannot even glance at them without noticing how remarkably this thinker of the twelfth century anticipated the judgment of the nineteenth century. His theses, like the theses of the advanced theology of these latter days, indicate two tendencies—an intellectual tendency to the more rational presentment of dogma, and an ethical tendency to the greater moralisation of ancient dogma. We have already seen a good illustration of this anticipation of modern tendencies in Abélard’s treatment of the traditional doctrines of heaven and hell respectively, and we shall see more later on. Of the fourteen specific points (thirteen in William’s letter) contained in the present indictment, we may pass over most of those which refer to the Trinity as without interest. Abélard’s phrases were new, but he cordially rejected the Arianism, Nestorianism, and so forth, with which Bernard insisted on crediting him. In the ninth proposition, that the species of bread and wine remain in the air after transubstantiation, and that adventurous mice only eat the species, not the Body of Christ, Abélard enunciated an opinion which has been widely adopted by modern Catholic theologians. In his second proposition, that the Holy Ghost was the Platonic _anima mundi_, Abélard was merely trying to save Plato from the damnation of the Bernardists.