school in the 12th century and the most profound metaphysician of either school. The views which he expressed in his commentary on the pseudo-Boetian treatise, De Trinitate, are certainly much more important than the mediatizing systems already referred to. The most interesting part of the work is the distinction which Gilbert draws between the manner of existence of genera and species and of substances proper. He distinguishes between the quod est and the quo est. Genera and species certainly exist, but they do not exist in their own right as substances. What exists as a substance and the basis of qualities or forms (quod est) may be said substare; the forms on the other hand by which such an individual substance exists qualitatively (quo est) subsistent, though it cannot be said that they substant. The intellect collects the universal, which exists but not as a substance (est sed non substat), from the particular things which not merely are (sunt) but also, as subjects of accidents, have substantial existence (substant), by considering only their substantial similarity or conformity. The universals are thus forms inherent in things—“native forms,” according to the expression by which Gilbert’s doctrine is concisely known. The individual consists of an assemblage of such forms; and it is individual because nowhere else is exactly such an assemblage to be met with. The form exists concretely in the individual things (sensibilis in re sensibili), for in sensible things form and matter are always united. But they may be conceived abstractly or non-sensuously by the mind (sed mente concipitur insensibilis), and they then refer themselves as copies to the Ideas their divine exemplars. In God, who is pure form without matter, the archetypes of material things exist as eternal immaterial forms. In this way Gilbert was at once Aristotelian and Platonist. The distinctions made by him above amount to a formal criticism of categories, and in the same spirit he teaches that no one of the categories can be applied in its literal sense to God (see further Gilbert de la Porrée).
But the outstanding figure in the controversies of the first half of the 12th century is Abelard. There is considerable. difference of opinion as to his system, some, like Ritter and Erdmann, regarding it as a moderate form of Realism—a return indeed to the position of Aristotle—while Abelard.others, like Cousin, Rémusat, Hauréau and Ueberweg, consider it to be essentially Nominalistic, only more prudently and perhaps less consistently expressed than was the case with Roscellinus. His position is ordinarily designated by the name Conceptualism (q.v.), though there is very little talk of concepts in Abelard’s own writings. There can be no doubt, at all events, that Abelard himself intended to find a compromise. As against Realism he maintains consistently Res de re non praedicatur; genera and species, therefore, which are predicated of the individual subject, cannot be treated as things or substances. This is manifestly true, however real the facts may be which are designated by the generic and specific names; and the position is fully accepted, as has been seen, by a Realist like Gilbert, who perhaps adopted it first from Abelard. Abelard also perceived that Realism, by separating the universal substance from the forms which individualize it, makes the universal indifferent to these forms, and leads directly to the doctrine of the identity of all beings in one universal substance or matter—a pantheism which might take either an Averroistic or a Spinozistic form. Against the system of non-difference Abelard has a number of logical and traditional arguments to bring, but it is sufficiently condemned by his fundamental doctrine that only the individual exists in its own right. For that system still seems to recognize a generic substance as the core of the individual, whereas, according to Cousin’s rendering of Abelard’s doctrine, “only individuals exist, and in the individual nothing but the individual.” Holding fast then on the one hand to the individual as the only true substance, and on the other to the traditional definition of the genus as that which is predicated of a number of individuals (quod praedicatur de pluribus), Abelard declared that this definition of itself condemns the Realistic theory; only a name, not a thing, can be so predicated—not the name, however, as a flatus vocis or a collection of letters, but the name as used in discourse, the name as a sign, as having a meaning—in a word, not vox but sermo. Sermo est praedicabilis.
By these distinctions Abelard hoped to escape the consequences of extreme Nominalism, from which, as a matter of history, his doctrine has been distinguished under the name of Conceptualism, seeing that it lays stress not on the word as such but on the thought which the word is intended to convey. Moreover, Abelard evidently did not mean to imply that the distinctions of genera and species are of arbitrary or merely human imposition. His favourite expression for the universal is “quod de pluribus natum est praedicari” (a translation of Aristotle, De interpretatione, 7), which would seem to point to a real or objective counterpart of the products of our thought; and the traditional definitions of Boetius, whom he frequently quotes, support the same view of the concept as gathered from a number of individuals in virtue of a real resemblance. What Abelard combats is the substantiation of these resembling qualities, which leads to their being regarded as identical in all the separate individuals, and thus paves the way for the gradual undermining of the individual, the only true and indivisible substance. But he modifies his Nominalism so as to approach, though somewhat vaguely, to the position of Aristotle himself. At the same time he has nothing to say against the Platonic theory of universalia ante rem (see Idealism). Abelard’s discussion of the problem (which it is right to say is on the whole incidental rather than systematic) is thus marked by an eclecticism which was perhaps the source at once of its strength and its weakness. But his brilliant ability and restless activity made him the central figure in the dialectical as in the other discussions of his time. To him was indirectly due, in the main, that troubling of the Realistic waters which resulted in so many modifications of the original thesis; and his own somewhat eclectic ruling on the question in debate came to be tacitly accepted in the schools, as the ardour of the disputants began to abate after the middle of the century.
Abelard’s application of dialectic to theology betrayed the Nominalistic basis of his doctrine. He zealously combated the Tritheism of Roscellinus, but his own views on the Trinity were condemned by two councils (at Soissons in 1121 and at Sens in 1140). Of the alternatives—threeBernard of Clairvaux. Gods or una res—which his Nominalistic logic presented to Roscellinus, Roscellinus had chosen the first; Abelard recoiled to the other extreme, reducing the three Persons to three aspects or attributes of the Divine Being (Power, Wisdom and Love). For this he was called to account by Bernard of Clairvaux (1091–1153), the recognized guardian of orthodoxy in France. Nor can it be said that the instinct of the saint was altogether at fault. The germs of Rationalism were unquestionably present in several of Abelard’s opinions, and still more so, the traditionalists must have thought, in his general attitude towards theological questions. “A doctrine is believed,” he said, “not because God has said it, but because we are convinced by reason that it is so.” “Doubt is the road to inquiry, and by inquiry we perceive the truth.” The application of dialectic to theology was not new. Anselm had made an elaborate employment of reason in the interest of faith, but the spirit of pious subordination which had marked the demonstrations of Anselm seemed wanting in the argumentations of this bolder and more restless spirit; and the church, or at least an influential section of it, took alarm at the encroachments of Rationalism. Abelard’s remarkable compilation Sic et Non was not calculated to allay their suspicions. In bringing together the conflicting opinions of the fathers on all the chief points of Christian dogmatics, it may be admitted that Abelard’s aim was simply to make these contradictions the starting point of an inquiry which should determine in each case the true position and via media of Christian theology. Only such a determination could enable the doctrines to be summarily presented as a system of thought. The book was undoubtedly the precursor of the famous Books of Sentences of Abelard’s own pupil Peter Lombard and others, and of all the Summae theologiae with which the church was presently to abound. But the antinomies, as they appeared in Abelard’s treatise, without their solutions, could not but seem to insinuate a deep-laid scepticism with regard to authority. And even the proposal to apply the unaided reason to solve questions which had divided the fathers must have been resented by the more rigid churchmen as the rash intrusion of an over-confident Rationalism.
Realism was in the beginning of the 12th century the dominant doctrine and the doctrine of the church; the Nominalists were the innovators and the especial representatives of the Rationalistic
