No long time thereafter I was smitten with a grievous illness,
brought upon me by my immoderate zeal for study. This illness
forced me to turn homeward to my native province, and thus for some
years I was as if cut off from France. And yet, for that very
reason, I was sought out all the more eagerly by those whose hearts
were troubled by the lore of dialectics. But after a few years had
passed, and I was whole again from my sickness, I learned that my
teacher, that same William Archdeacon of Paris, had changed his
former garb and joined an order of the regular clergy. This he had
done, or so men said, in order that he might be deemed more deeply
religious, and so might be elevated to a loftier rank in the
prelacy, a thing which, in truth, very soon came to pass, for he
was made bishop of Châlons. Nevertheless, the garb he had donned by
reason of his conversion did nought to keep him away either from
the city of Paris or from his wonted study of philosophy; and in
the very monastery wherein he had shut himself up for the sake of
religion he straightway set to teaching again after the same
fashion as before.

To him did I return, for I was eager to learn more of rhetoric from
his lips; and in the course of our many arguments on various
matters, I compelled him by most potent reasoning first to alter
his former opinion on the subject of the universals, and finally to
abandon it altogether. Now, the basis of this old concept of his
regarding the reality of universal ideas was that the same quality
formed the essence alike of the abstract whole and of the
individuals which were its parts: in other words, that there could
be no essential differences among these individuals, all being
alike save for such variety as might grow out of the many accidents