In Abélard's time Arab Aristotelianism, with its consequences for
thought and life, was filtering into Europe and forcing Christian
thinkers to defend the bases of their faith. Since these, so far as
defensible at all, depended upon the Platonic doctrine of universals,
and this could be maintained only by dialectic, this science became
extremely popular,--indeed, almost the rage. Little of the real
Aristotle was at that time known in the West; but in Porphyry's
Introduction to Aristotle's Logic was a famous passage, in which all the
difficulties with regard to universals were stated without being solved.
Over this the intellectual battles of the first age of Scholasticism
were fought. The more clerical and mystic thinkers, like Anselm and
Bernard, of course sided with Plato; but the more worldly, robust
thinkers inclined to accept Aristotle, not seeing that his doctrine is
fatal to the Trinity.

Prominent among these was a Breton, Roscellin, the early instructor of
Abélard. From him the brilliant, fearless boy learnt two terrible
lessons: (1) that universals, instead of being real substances, external
and superior to individual things, are mere names (hence Nominalism) for
common qualities of things as recognized by the human mind; (2) that
since universals are the tools and criteria of thought, the human mind,
in which alone these exist, is the judge of all truth,--a lesson which
leads directly to pure rationalism, and indeed to the rehabilitation of
the human as against the superhuman. No wonder that Roscellin came into
conflict with the church authorities, and had to flee to England.
Abélard afterwards modified his nominalism and behaved somewhat
unhandsomely to him, but never escaped from the influence of his
teaching. Abélard was a rationalist and an asserter of the human.
Accordingly, when, definitely adopting the vocation of the scholar, he