Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/162

144 a sudden revulsion of feeling, a failure of courage or a flash of certainty that the votes of the council were already secured, perhaps that the excited populace would rise against him, —he appealed from that tribunal to the sovereign judgement of the Roman pontiff, and quitted the assembly.

Thus at the close of his life as at every juncture in its progress, Abailard's fortunes turned upon the alternations of his inner mood. He believed his actions to be under the mechanical control of his mind; yet he was really the creature of impulse. At the critical moment, that lofty self-confidence of which he boasted would suddenly desert him and change by a swift transition into the extreme of despondency, of incapacity for action. He fled from the council, which proceeded to condemn his doctrines with as little scruple and as little examination as the council of Soissons, but he never reached Rome. He rested on