In those days not to be a warrior was to be—almost of compulsion—a monk. But Abelard’s independence forbade the second as his disputatious spirit had forbidden the first. He would neither risk his neck in the wars nor his opinions in the cloister. Instead of these he preferred the irregular combats of the scholar, and Bayle—with a touch of poetry—beholds him as he comes shining out of Brittany “darting syllogisms on every side.” Such was Peter Abelard—vain, handsome, opinionated, bound to swear by no master, a mighty voice crying in the desert of the Dark Ages for “free speech and free thought.” The expedition to Paris hurt neither his reputation nor his purse. He arrived at perihelion as quickly as a comet. William of Champeaux—having first pushed him off and forced him to lecture on his own account at Melun and Corbeil—found that he returned like a cork thrust under water. The man’s buoyant, aggressive self-reliance, not to say self-conceit, was never contented with an inferior place. And while Alberic and Littulf and some of the older and more staid of his pupils held with William, it was plain that the popular favor inclined to the other side. The younger men were all for Abelard. The “doctrine of universals” was exploded as if with some of Friar Bacon’s “villainous saltpetre,” and doubtless the loss was small enough to mankind. His principal fort being taken, there was nothing left for the opposing general but a masterly retreat. Hence, by a convenient arrangement, combining several advantages, Guillaume des Champeaux became Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne. And it was, of course, beneath the dignity of a bishop to hold lectures or to engage in logical controversies! But, as generally happens, a sand-bag substitute was put in the bishop’s place; and Abelard came back to open a school on Mt. St. Genevieve and to bombard this professor. The battle was short and decisive, for the next we learn of this nameless champion of a defeated cause, he is absolutely enrolled as a humble follower of the great logician. This is but a fair sample of the general success which attended the new ideas. Everywhere they gained currency, attracting inquiry, arousing envy, awaking ecclesiastical suspicion, and inflaming the hatred of his defeated opponents.