The work itself opens with a statement of its intended divisions: “In three matters, as I judge, rests the sum of human salvation: _Fides_, _caritas_, and _sacramentum_”; and he gives his definition of faith, which was so obnoxious to Bernard and others, as the _existimatio rerum non apparentium_. The three extant Books do not conclude the treatment even of the first of these three topics. But one readily sees that were the work complete, its arrangement might correspond with that of Thomas’s _Summa_.[479] One may reiterate that it was more constructively argumentative than the _Theologia Christiana_, even in the manner of using the cited authorities. For instance, Abaelard’s mind is fixed on the analogy between the Neo-Platonic Trinity of _Deus_, _nous_, and _anima mundi_, and that of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The _nous_ fitly represents Christ, who is the _Sapientia Dei_--which Abaelard sets forth; but then with even greater insistency he identifies the Holy Spirit with the world-soul. Nothing gave a stronger warrant to the accusations of heresy brought against him than this last doctrine, with which he was obsessed. Yet what roused St. Bernard and his jackals was not so much any particular opinion of Abaelard, as his dialectic and critical spirit, which insisted upon understanding and explaining, before believing. “The faith of the righteous believes; it does not dispute. But that man, suspicious of God (_Deum habens suspectum_), has no mind to believe what his reason has not previously argued.”[480] Still, when Bernard says that faith does not discuss, but believes, he states a conviction of his mind, a conviction corresponding with an inner need of his own to formulate and express his thought. Only, with Abaelard the need to consider and analyse was more consciously imperative. He could not avoid the constant query: How shall I think this thing--this thing, for example, which is declared by revelation? Just as other questioning spirits in other times might be driven upon the query: How shall we think these things which are disclosed by the variegated walls of our physical environment? Those yield data, or refuse them, and force the mind to put many queries, and come to some adjustment. So experience presents data for adjustment, just as dogma, Scripture, revelation present that which reason must bring within the action of its processes, and endeavour to find rational expression for. II