A new age began for Paris and for learning, when Peter Abélard accepted the chair of the episcopal school. It would be a difficult task to measure the influence he had in hastening the foundation of the university—as difficult as to estimate the enduring effect of his teaching on Catholic theology. There were other streams flowing into the life of the period, and they would have expanded and deepened it, independently of the activity of the one brilliant teacher. The work of a group of less gifted, though highly gifted, teachers had started a current of mental life which would have continued and broadened without the aid of Abélard. Life was entering upon a swifter course in all its reaches. Moreover, the slender rill of Greek thought, which formed the inspiration of the eleventh century, was beginning to increase. Through Alexandria, through Arabia, through Spain, the broad stream of the wisdom of the Greeks had been slowly travelling with the centuries. In the twelfth century it was crossing the Pyrenees, and stealing into the jealous schools of Europe. The homeless Jew was bringing the strong, swift, noble spirit of the ‘infidel Moor’ into a hideous world, that was blind with self-complacency. The higher works of Aristotle (the early Middle Ages had only his logic), the words of Plato, and so many others, were drifting into France. Christian scholars were even beginning to think of going to see with their own eyes this boasted civilisation of the infidel. Yet it is clear that Abélard stands for a mighty force in the story of development. At the end of the eleventh century Paris was an island; at the end of the twelfth century it was a city of two hundred thousand souls, walled, paved, with several fine buildings and a fair organisation. At the end of the eleventh century the schools of Paris, scattered here and there, counted a few hundred pupils, chiefly French; at the end of the twelfth century the University of Paris must have numbered not far short of ten thousand scholars. Let us see how much of this was effected by Abélard.