all possible facts that are true, as humanity is the sum of all
actual human beings. The ideal bed is a form, made by God, said
Plato. The ideal bed is a name, imagined by ourselves, said
Aristotle. 'I start from the universe,' said William. 'I start from
the atom,' said Abélard; and, once having started, they necessarily
came into collision at some point between the two."

In this "Story of My Misfortunes" Abélard gives his own account of
the triumphant manner in which he confounded his master, William,
but as Henry Adams says, "We should be more credulous than
twelfth-century monks, if we believed, on Abélard's word in 1135,
that in 1110 he had driven out of the schools the most accomplished
dialectician of the age by an objection so familiar that no other
dialectician was ever silenced by it--whatever may have been the
case with theologians-and so obvious that it could not have troubled
a scholar of fifteen. William stated a selected doctrine as old as
Plato; Abélard interposed an objection as old as Aristotle. Probably
Plato and Aristotle had received the question and answer from
philosophers ten thousand years older than themselves. Certainly
the whole of philosophy has always been involved in this dispute."

So began the battle of the schools with all its more than military
strategy and tactics, and in the end it was a drawn battle, in
spite of its marvels of intellectual heroism and dialectical
sublety. Says Henry Adams again:--

"In every age man has been apt to dream uneasily, rolling from side
to side, beating against imaginary bars, unless, tired out, he has
sunk into indifference or scepticism. Religious minds prefer
scepticism. The true saint is a profound sceptic; a total