Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/136

118 of resistance in his pupil, and in a year Abailard left the school. After spending perhaps a short time at Chartres, where he attempted in vain to acquire the rudiments of mathematics,—though this experience may belong to a later period in his career,—he made his way to Paris, to the cathedral school, where his master was the representative realist, William of Champeaux.

The abruptness of the transition from Roscelin to William, the extreme views held by the two masters, may explain how it was that Abailard set himself in turn to combat the logical position of both; but his subsequent career sufficiently shews how little inclined he was under any circumstances to subject his intellect to the authority of a teacher. The nominalistic principles which he had learned from Roscelin, he took with him to Paris and used with signal effect against the hierophant of realism. He at once aspired to the rank and influence of an acknowledged master, but the not unnatural hostility of William seems to have prevented his opening a school in Paris itself. The history of the relations of the two rivals is like John Scot's account of logic; it was a flight and a chase, quaedam fuga et insecutio. The same city was not large enough to hold them both. Abailard therefore began by teaching at some distance from Paris, in the royal fortress of Melun; he soon ventured a little higher up the Seine, to Corbeil. But the severity of his studies had told upon his health, and he was forced to take rest. For a few years he lived in seclusion, possibly with his family in Brittany; but so soon as his strength was recovered he hastened again to Paris.

By this time William of Champeaux also had withdrawn from the active work of the cathedral school and had retired to the priory of Saint Victor. But the pressure of his friends had not left him long in his religious leisure: he was now lecturing at Saint Victor on the old subjects, and Abailard was once more found among his auditory, less a pupil than a critic. Abailard pressed the master with objections: he boasts that the com-