Chapter III: Universities

WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY?

If I were asked to describe as briefly and
popularly as I could, what a University was, I
should draw my answer from its ancient
designation of a _Studium Generale_, or "School of
Universal Learning." This description implies 5
the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one
spot--_from all parts_; else, how will you find
professors and students for every department of
knowledge? and _in one spot_; else, how can there
be any school at all? Accordingly, in its simple 10
and rudimental form, it is a school of knowledge
of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners
from every quarter. Many things are requisite
to complete and satisfy the idea embodied in this
description; but such as this a University seems 15
to be in its essence, a place for the
communication and circulation of thought, by means of
personal intercourse, through a wide extent of
country.

Mutual education, in a large sense of the word, 20
is one of the great and incessant occupations of
human society, carried on partly with set
purpose, and partly not. One generation forms
another; and the existing generation is ever
acting and reacting upon itself in the persons of its
individual members. Now, in this process, books,
I need scarcely say, that is, the _litera scripta_,
are one special instrument. It is true; and 5
emphatically so in this age. Considering the
prodigious powers of the press, and how they are
developed at this time in the never intermitting
issue of periodicals, tracts, pamphlets, works in
series, and light literature, we must allow there 10
never was a time which promised fairer for
dispensing with every other means of information
and instruction. What can we want more, you
will say, for the intellectual education of the
whole man, and for every man, than so exuberant 15
and diversified and persistent a promulgation
of all kinds of knowledge? Why, you will ask,
need we go up to knowledge, when knowledge
comes down to us? The Sibyl wrote her
prophecies upon the leaves of the forest, and wasted 20
them; but here such careless profusion might be
prudently indulged, for it can be afforded
without loss, in consequence of the almost fabulous
fecundity of the instrument which these latter
ages have invented. We have sermons in stones, 25
and books in the running brooks; works larger
and more comprehensive than those which have
gained for ancients an immortality, issue forth
every morning, and are projected onwards to
the ends of the earth at the rate of hundreds of 30
miles a day. Our seats are strewed, our pavements
are powdered, with swarms of little tracts;
and the very bricks of our city walls preach
wisdom, by informing us by their placards where we
can at once cheaply purchase it.

I allow all this, and much more; such 5
certainly is our popular education, and its effects are
remarkable. Nevertheless, after all, even in this
age, whenever men are really serious about
getting what, in the language of trade, is called "a
good article," when they aim at something 10
precise, something refined, something really
luminous, something really large, something choice,
they go to another market; they avail themselves,
in some shape or other, of the rival method, the
ancient method, of oral instruction, of present 15
communication between man and man, of teachers
instead of learning, of the personal influence of a
master, and the humble initiation of a disciple,
and, in consequence, of great centers of
pilgrimage and throng, which such a method of 20
education necessarily involves.

If the actions of men may be taken as any test
of their convictions, then we have reason for
saying this, viz.: that the province and the
inestimable benefit of the _litera scripta_ is that of 25
being a record of truth, and an authority of appeal,
and an instrument of teaching in the hands of a
teacher; but that, if we wish to become exact and
fully furnished in any branch of knowledge which
is diversified and complicated, we must consult 30
the living man and listen to his living voice....
No book can convey the special spirit and
delicate peculiarities of its subject with that
rapidity and certainty which attend on the sympathy
of mind with mind, through the eyes, the look,
the accent, and the manner, in casual expressions 5
thrown off at the moment, and the unstudied
turns of familiar conversation. But I am already
dwelling too long on what is but an incidental
portion of my main subject. Whatever be the
cause, the fact is undeniable. The general 10
principles of any study you may learn by books at
home; but the detail, the color, the tone, the
air, the life which makes it live in us, you must
catch all these from those in whom it lives
already. You must imitate the student in French 15
or German, who is not content with his
grammar, but goes to Paris or Dresden: you must
take example from the young artist, who aspires
to visit the great Masters in Florence and in
Rome. Till we have discovered some 20
intellectual daguerreotype, which takes off the course of
thought, and the form, lineaments, and features
of truth, as completely and minutely, as the
optical instrument reproduces the sensible
object, we must come to the teachers of wisdom 25
to learn wisdom, we must repair to the fountain,
and drink there. Portions of it may go from
thence to the ends of the earth by means of
books; but the fullness is in one place alone. It
is in such assemblages and congregations of 30
intellect that books themselves, the masterpieces
of human genius, are written, or at least
originated.

The principle on which I have been insisting
is so obvious, and instances in point are so ready,
that I should think it tiresome to proceed with 5
the subject, except that one or two illustrations
may serve to explain my own language about it,
which may not have done justice to the doctrine
which it has been intended to enforce.

For instance, the polished manners and 10
high-bred bearing which are so difficult of attainment,
and so strictly personal when attained,--which
are so much admired in society, from society
are acquired. All that goes to constitute a
gentleman,--the carriage, gait, address, gestures, 15
voice; the ease, the self-possession, the courtesy,
the power of conversing, the talent of not
offending; the lofty principle, the delicacy of thought,
the happiness of expression, the taste and
propriety, the generosity and forbearance, the 20
candor and consideration, the openness of
hand--these qualities, some of them come by nature,
some of them may be found in any rank, some of
them are a direct precept of Christianity; but
the full assemblage of them, bound up in the 25
unity of an individual character, do we expect
they can be learned from books? are they not
necessarily acquired, where they are to be found,
in high society? The very nature of the case
leads us to say so; you cannot fence without an 30
antagonist, nor challenge all comers in disputation
before you have supported a thesis; and in
like manner, it stands to reason, you cannot learn
to converse till you have the world to converse
with; you cannot unlearn your natural
bashfulness, or awkwardness, or stiffness, or other 5
besetting deformity, till you serve your time in
some school of manners. Well, and is it not so
in matter of fact? The metropolis, the court,
the great houses of the land, are the centers to
which at stated times the country comes up, as to 10
shrines of refinement and good taste; and then
in due time the country goes back again home,
enriched with a portion of the social
accomplishments, which those very visits serve to call out
and heighten in the gracious dispensers of them. 15
We are unable to conceive how the
"gentleman-like" can otherwise be maintained; and
maintained in this way it is....

Religious teaching itself affords us an
illustration of our subject to a certain point. It 20
does not indeed seat itself merely in centers of
the world; this is impossible from the nature of
the case. It is intended for the many not the
few; its subject-matter is truth necessary for us,
not truth recondite and rare; but it concurs in 25
the principle of a University so far as this, that
its great instrument, or rather organ, has ever
been that which nature prescribes in all education,
the personal presence of a teacher, or, in
theological language, Oral Tradition. It is the living 30
voice, the breathing form, the expressive countenance,
which preaches, which catechises. Truth,
a subtle, invisible, manifold spirit, is poured into
the mind of the scholar by his eyes and ears,
through his affections, imagination, and reason;
it is poured into his mind and is sealed up there 5
in perpetuity, by propounding and repeating it,
by questioning and requestioning, by correcting
and explaining, by progressing and then recurring
to first principles, by all those ways which are
implied in the word "catechising." In the first 10
ages, it was a work of long time; months,
sometimes years, were devoted to the arduous task
of disabusing the mind of the incipient Christian
of its pagan errors, and of molding it upon the
Christian faith. The Scriptures indeed were at 15
hand for the study of those who could avail
themselves of them; but St. Irenæus does not
hesitate to speak of whole races, who had been
converted to Christianity, without being able to
read them. To be unable to read or write was in 20
those times no evidence of want of learning: the
hermits of the deserts were, in this sense of the
word, illiterate; yet the great St. Anthony,
though he knew not letters, was a match in
disputation for the learned philosophers who came 25
to try him. Didymus again, the great
Alexandrian theologian, was blind. The ancient
discipline, called the _Disciplina Arcani_, involved the
same principle. The more sacred doctrines of
Revelation were not committed to books but 30
passed on by successive tradition. The teaching
on the Blessed Trinity, and the Eucharist
appears to have been so handed down for some
hundred years; and when at length reduced to
writing, it has filled many folios, yet has not been
exhausted. 5

But I have said more than enough in
illustration; end as I began--a University is a place
of concourse, whither students come from every
quarter for every kind of knowledge. You
cannot have the best of every kind everywhere; you 10
must go to some great city or emporium for it.
There you have all the choicest productions
of nature and art all together, which you find
each in its own separate place elsewhere. All
the riches of the land, and of the earth, are 15
carried up thither; there are the best markets, and
there the best workmen. It is the center of
trade, the supreme court of fashion, the umpire
of rival talents, and the standard of things rare
and precious. It is the place for seeing galleries 20
of first-rate pictures, and for hearing wonderful
voices and performers of transcendent skill. It
is the place for great preachers, great orators,
great nobles, great statesmen. In the nature of
things, greatness and unity go together; 25
excellence implies a center. And such, for the third
or fourth time, is a University; I hope I do not
weary out the reader by repeating it. It is the
place to which a thousand schools make
contributions; in which the intellect may safely 30
range and speculate, sure to find its equal in
some antagonist activity, and its judge in the
tribunal of truth. It is a place where inquiry
is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and
perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and
error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, 5
and knowledge with knowledge. It is the place
where the professor becomes eloquent, and is a
missionary and a preacher, displaying his science
in its most complete and most winning form,
pouring it forth with the zeal of enthusiasm, and 10
lighting up his own love of it in the breasts of
his hearers. It is the place where the catechist
makes good his ground as he goes, treading in the
truth day by day into the ready memory, and
wedging and tightening it into the expanding 15
reason. It is a place which wins the admiration
of the young by its celebrity, kindles the
affections of the middle-aged by its beauty, and rivets
the fidelity of the old by its associations. It is a
seat of wisdom, a light of the world, a minister of 20
the faith, an Alma Mater of the rising generation.
It is this and a great deal more, and demands a
somewhat better head and hand than mine to
describe it well.

UNIVERSITY LIFE

ATHENS

It has been my desire, were I able, to bring 25
before the reader what Athens may have been,
viewed as what we have since called a University;
and to do this, not with any purpose of writing
a panegyric on a heathen city, or of denying
its many deformities, or of concealing what was
morally base in what was intellectually great, but
just the contrary, of representing as they really 5
were; so far, that is, as to enable him to see what
a University is, in the very constitution of society
and in its own idea, what is its nature and object,
and what its needs of aid and support external to
itself to complete that nature and to secure that 10
object.

So now let us fancy our Scythian, or Armenian,
or African, or Italian, or Gallic student, after
tossing on the Saronic waves, which would be his
more ordinary course to Athens, at last casting 15
anchor at Piræus. He is of any condition or rank
of life you please, and may be made to order,
from a prince to a peasant. Perhaps he is some
Cleanthes, who has been a boxer in the public
games. How did it ever cross his brain to betake 20
himself to Athens in search of wisdom? or, if he
came thither by accident, how did the love of it
ever touch his heart? But so it was, to Athens he
came with three drachms in his girdle, and he got
his livelihood by drawing water, carrying loads, 25
and the like servile occupations. He attached
himself, of all philosophers, to Zeno the
Stoic,--to Zeno, the most high-minded, the most haughty
of speculators; and out of his daily earnings the
poor scholar brought his master the daily sum of 30
an obolus, in payment for attending his lectures.
Such progress did he make, that on Zeno's death
he actually was his successor in his school; and,
if my memory does not play me false, he is the
author of a hymn to the Supreme Being, which is
one of the noblest effusions of the kind in classical 5
poetry. Yet, even when he was the head of a
school, he continued in his illiberal toil as if he
had been a monk; and, it is said, that once, when
the wind took his pallium, and blew it aside, he
was discovered to have no other garment at 10
all--something like the German student who came up
to Heidelberg with nothing upon him but a great
coat and a pair of pistols.

Or it is another disciple of the Porch--Stoic
by nature, earlier than by profession--who is 15
entering the city; but in what different fashion
he comes! It is no other than Marcus, Emperor
of Rome and philosopher. Professors long since
were summoned from Athens for his service, when
he was a youth, and now he comes, after his 20
victories in the battlefield, to make his
acknowledgments at the end of life, to the city of wisdom, and
to submit himself to an initiation into the
Eleusinian mysteries.

Or it is a young man of great promise as an 25
orator, were it not for his weakness of chest, which
renders it necessary that he should acquire the art
of speaking without over-exertion, and should
adopt a delivery sufficient for the display of his
rhetorical talents on the one hand, yet merciful 30
to his physical resources on the other. He is
called Cicero; he will stop but a short time, and
will pass over to Asia Minor and its cities, before
he returns to continue a career which will render
his name immortal; and he will like his short
sojourn at Athens so well, that he will take good 5
care to send his son thither at an earlier age than
he visited it himself.

But see where comes from Alexandria (for we
need not be very solicitous about anachronisms),
a young man from twenty to twenty-two, who 10
has narrowly escaped drowning on his voyage,
and is to remain at Athens as many as eight or
ten years, yet in the course of that time will not
learn a line of Latin, thinking it enough to
become accomplished in Greek composition, and in 15
that he will succeed. He is a grave person, and
difficult to make out; some say he is a Christian,
something or other in the Christian line his father
is for certain. His name is Gregory, he is by
country a Cappadocian, and will in time become 20
preëminently a theologian, and one of the
principal Doctors of the Greek Church.

Or it is one Horace, a youth of low stature and
black hair, whose father has given him an
education at Rome above his rank in life, and now is 25
sending him to finish it at Athens; he is said to
have a turn for poetry: a hero he is not, and it
were well if he knew it; but he is caught by the
enthusiasm of the hour, and goes off campaigning
with Brutus and Cassius, and will leave his shield 30
behind him on the field of Philippi.

Or it is a mere boy of fifteen: his name
Eunapius; though the voyage was not long, sea
sickness, or confinement, or bad living on board the
vessel, threw him into a fever, and, when the
passengers landed in the evening at Piræus, he 5
could not stand. His countrymen who
accompanied him, took him up among them and carried
him to the house of the great teacher of the day,
Proæresius, who was a friend of the captain's,
and whose fame it was which drew the 10
enthusiastic youth to Athens. His companions
understand the sort of place they are in, and, with the
license of academic students, they break into the
philosopher's house, though he appears to have
retired for the night, and proceed to make 15
themselves free of it, with an absence of ceremony,
which is only not impudence, because Proæresius
takes it so easily. Strange introduction for our
stranger to a seat of learning, but not out of
keeping with Athens; for what could you expect of a 20
place where there was a mob of youths and not
even the pretense of control; where the poorer
lived any how, and got on as they could, and the
teachers themselves had no protection from the
humors and caprices of the students who filled 25
their lecture halls? However, as to this
Eunapius, Proæresius took a fancy to the boy, and told
him curious stories about Athenian life. He
himself had come up to the University with one
Hephæstion, and they were even worse off than 30
Cleanthes the Stoic; for they had only one cloak
between them, and nothing whatever besides,
except some old bedding; so when Proæresius
went abroad, Hephæstion lay in bed, and
practiced himself in oratory; and then Hephæstion
put on the cloak, and Proæresius crept under the 5
coverlet. At another time there was so fierce
a feud between what would be called "town and
gown" in an English University, that the
Professors did not dare lecture in public, for fear of
ill treatment. 10

But a freshman like Eunapius soon got
experience for himself of the ways and manners
prevalent in Athens. Such a one as he had hardly
entered the city, when he was caught hold of by
a party of the academic youth, who proceeded to 15
practice on his awkwardness and his ignorance.
At first sight one wonders at their childishness;
but the like conduct obtained in the mediæval
Universities; and not many months have passed
away since the journals have told us of sober 20
Englishmen, given to matter-of-fact calculations,
and to the anxieties of money making, pelting
each other with snowballs on their own sacred
territory, and defying the magistracy, when they
would interfere with their privileges of 25
becoming boys. So I suppose we must attribute it to
something or other in human nature. Meanwhile,
there stands the newcomer, surrounded by a circle
of his new associates, who forthwith proceed to
frighten, and to banter, and to make a fool of him, 30
to the extent of their wit. Some address him with
mock politeness, others with fierceness; and so
they conduct him in solemn procession across the
Agora to the Baths; and as they approach, they
dance about him like madmen. But this was to
be the end of his trial, for the Bath was a sort of 5
initiation; he thereupon received the pallium, or
University gown, and was suffered by his
tormentors to depart in peace. One alone is
recorded as having been exempted from this
persecution; it was a youth graver and loftier than 10
even St. Gregory himself: but it was not from his
force of character, but at the instance of Gregory,
that he escaped. Gregory was his bosom friend,
and was ready in Athens to shelter him when
he came. It was another Saint and Doctor; the 15
great Basil, then, (it would appear,) as Gregory,
but a catechumen of the Church.

But to return to our freshman. His troubles
are not at an end, though he has got his gown
upon him. Where is he to lodge? whom is he 20
to attend? He finds himself seized, before he
well knows where he is, by another party of men
or three or four parties at once, like foreign
porters at a landing, who seize on the baggage of the
perplexed stranger, and thrust half a dozen cards 25
into his unwilling hands. Our youth is plied by
the hangers-on of professor this, or sophist that,
each of whom wishes the fame or the profit of
having a houseful. We will say that he escapes
from their hands,--but then he will have to 30
choose for himself where he will put up; and, to
tell the truth, with all the praise I have already
given, and the praise I shall have to give, to
the city of mind, nevertheless, between ourselves,
the brick and wood which formed it, the actual
tenements, where flesh and blood had to lodge 5
(always excepting the mansions of great men of
the place), do not seem to have been much better
than those of Greek or Turkish towns, which are
at this moment a topic of interest and ridicule
in the public prints. A lively picture has lately 10
been set before us of Gallipoli. Take, says the
writer,[41] a multitude of the dilapidated outhouses
found in farm-yards in England, of the rickety
old wooden tenements, the cracked, shutterless
structures of planks and tiles, the sheds and stalls, 15
which our bye lanes, or fish-markets, or
river-sides can supply; tumble them down on the
declivity of a bare bald hill; let the spaces
between house and house, thus accidentally
determined, be understood to form streets, winding of 20
course for no reason, and with no meaning, up and
down the town; the roadway always narrow, the
breadth never uniform, the separate houses
bulging or retiring below, as circumstances may have
determined, and leaning forward till they meet 25
overhead--and you have a good idea of
Gallipoli. I question whether this picture would
not nearly correspond to the special seat of the
Muses in ancient times. Learned writers assure
us distinctly that the houses of Athens were for 30
the most part small and mean; that the streets
were crooked and narrow; that the upper stories
projected over the roadway; and that staircases,
balustrades, and doors that opened outwards
obstructed it--a remarkable coincidence of 5
description. I do not doubt at all, though
history is silent, that that roadway was jolting to
carriages, and all but impassable; and that it
was traversed by drains, as freely as any Turkish
town now. Athens seems in these respects to 10
have been below the average cities of its time.
"A stranger," says an ancient, "might doubt, on
the sudden view, if really he saw Athens."

[41] Mr. Russell's Letters in the _Times_ newspaper (1854).

I grant all this, and much more, if you will;
but, recollect, Athens was the home of the 15
intellectual and beautiful; not of low mechanical
contrivances and material organization. Why
stop within your lodgings counting the rents in
your wall or the holes in your tiling, when nature
and art call you away? You must put up with 20
such a chamber, and a table, and a stool, and a
sleeping board, anywhere else in the three
continents; one place does not differ from another
indoors; your magalia in Africa, or your grottoes
in Syria are not perfection. I suppose you did 25
not come to Athens to swarm up a ladder, or to
grope about a closet: you came to see and to
hear, what hear and see you could not elsewhere.
What food for the intellect is it possible to
procure indoors, that you stay there looking about 30
you? do you think to read there? where are your
books? do you expect to purchase books at
Athens--you are much out in your calculations.
True it is, we at this day, who live in the
nineteenth century, have the books of Greece as a
perpetual memorial; and copies there have been, 5
since the time that they were written; but you
need not go to Athens to procure them, nor would
you find them in Athens. Strange to say, strange
to the nineteenth century, that in the age of Plato
and Thucydides, there was not, it is said, a 10
bookshop in the whole place; nor was the book trade
in existence till the very time of Augustus.
Libraries, I suspect, were the bright invention of
Attalus or the Ptolemies;[42] I doubt whether
Athens had a library till the reign of Hadrian. 15
It was what the student gazed on, what he heard,
what he caught by the magic of sympathy, not
what he read, which was the education furnished
by Athens.

[42] I do not go into controversy on the subject, for which the
reader must have recourse to Lipsius, Morhof, Boeckh, Bekker, etc.;
and this of course applies to whatever historical matter I
introduce, or shall introduce.

He leaves his narrow lodging early in the 20
morning; and not till night, if even then, will he
return. It is but a crib or kennel, in which
he sleeps when the weather is inclement or the
ground damp; in no respect a home. And he
goes out of doors, not to read the day's 25
newspaper, or to buy the gay shilling volume, but to
imbibe the invisible atmosphere of genius, and
to learn by heart the oral traditions of taste.
Out he goes; and, leaving the tumble-down
town behind him, he mounts the Acropolis to
the right, or he turns to the Areopagus on the left.
He goes to the Parthenon to study the sculptures 5
of Phidias; to the temple of the Dioscuri to see
the paintings of Polygnotus. We indeed take
our Sophocles or Æschylus out of our coat pocket;
but, if our sojourner at Athens would understand
how a tragic poet can write, he must betake 10
himself to the theater on the south, and see and
hear the drama literally in action. Or let him go
westward to the Agora, and there he will hear
Lysias or Andocides pleading, or Demosthenes
haranguing. He goes farther west still, along the 15
shade of those noble planes, which Cimon has
planted there; and he looks around him at the
statues and porticoes and vestibules, each by
itself a work of genius and skill, enough to be the
making of another city. He passes through the 20
city gate, and then he is at the famous Ceramicus;
here are the tombs of the mighty dead; and here,
we will suppose, is Pericles himself, the most
elevated, the most thrilling of orators, converting a
funeral oration over the slain into a philosophical 25
panegyric of the living.

Onwards he proceeds still; and now he has
come to that still more celebrated Academe,
which has bestowed its own name on Universities
down to this day; and there he sees a sight which 30
will be graven on his memory till he dies. Many
are the beauties of the place, the groves, and the
statues, and the temple, and the stream of the
Cephissus flowing by; many are the lessons
which will be taught him day after day by teacher
or by companion; but his eye is just now arrested 5
by one object; it is the very presence of Plato.
He does not hear a word that he says; he does
not care to hear; he asks neither for discourse
nor disputation; what he sees is a whole,
complete in itself, not to be increased by addition, and 10
greater than anything else. It will be a point in
the history of his life; a stay for his memory to
rest on, a burning thought in his heart, a bond of
union with men of like mind, ever afterwards.
Such is the spell which the living man exerts on 15
his fellows, for good or for evil. How nature
impels us to lean upon others, making virtue, or
genius, or name, the qualification for our doing
so! A Spaniard is said to have traveled to Italy,
simply to see Livy; he had his fill of gazing, and 20
then went back again home. Had our young
stranger got nothing by his voyage but the sight
of the breathing and moving Plato, had he
entered no lecture room to hear, no gymnasium to
converse, he had got some measure of education, 25
and something to tell of to his grandchildren.

But Plato is not the only sage, nor the sight of
him the only lesson to be learned in this
wonderful suburb. It is the region and the realm
of philosophy. Colleges were the inventions of 30
many centuries later; and they imply a sort of
cloistered life, or at least a life of rule, scarcely
natural to an Athenian. It was the boast of the
philosophic statesman of Athens, that his
countrymen achieved by the mere force of nature and
the love of the noble and the great, what other 5
people aimed at by laborious discipline; and all
who came among them were submitted to the
same method of education. We have traced our
student on his wanderings from the Acropolis to
the Sacred Way; and now he is in the region of 10
the schools. No awful arch, no window of
many-colored lights marks the seats of learning there
or elsewhere; philosophy lives out of doors. No
close atmosphere oppresses the brain or inflames
the eyelid; no long session stiffens the limbs. 15
Epicurus is reclining in his garden; Zeno looks
like a divinity in his porch; the restless Aristotle,
on the other side of the city, as if in antagonism
to Plato, is walking his pupils off their legs in his
Lyceum by the Ilyssus. Our student has 20
determined on entering himself as a disciple of
Theophrastus, a teacher of marvelous popularity, who
has brought together two thousand pupils from
all parts of the world. He himself is of Lesbos;
for masters, as well as students, come hither from 25
all regions of the earth--as befits a University.
How could Athens have collected hearers in such
numbers, unless she had selected teachers of such
power? it was the range of territory, which the
notion of a University implies, which furnished 30
both the quantity of the one and the quality of
the other. Anaxagoras was from Ionia, Carneades
from Africa, Zeno from Cyprus, Protagoras from
Thrace, and Gorgias from Sicily. Andromachus
was a Syrian, Proæresius an Armenian, Hilarius
a Bithynian, Philiscus a Thessalian, Hadrian a 5
Syrian. Rome is celebrated for her liberality in
civil matters; Athens was as liberal in
intellectual. There was no narrow jealousy, directed
against a Professor, because he was not an
Athenian; genius and talent were the qualifications; 10
and to bring them to Athens, was to do homage
to it as a University. There was a brotherhood
and a citizenship of mind.

Mind came first, and was the foundation of the
academical polity; but it soon brought along with 15
it, and gathered round itself, the gifts of fortune
and the prizes of life. As time went on, wisdom
was not always sentenced to the bare cloak of
Cleanthes; but, beginning in rags, it ended in
fine linen. The Professors became honorable 20
and rich; and the students ranged themselves
under their names, and were proud of calling
themselves their countrymen. The University
was divided into four great nations, as the
mediæval antiquarian would style them; and in the 25
middle of the fourth century, Proæresius was the
leader or proctor of the Attic, Hephæstion of
the Oriental, Epiphanius of the Arabic, and
Diophantus of the Pontic. Thus the Professors
were both patrons of clients, and hosts and 30
_proxeni_ of strangers and visitors, as well as masters
of the schools: and the Cappadocian, Syrian,
or Sicilian youth who came to one or other of
them, would be encouraged to study by his
protection, and to aspire by his example.

Even Plato, when the schools of Athens were 5
not a hundred years old, was in circumstances
to enjoy the _otium cum dignitate_. He had a villa
out at Heraclea; and he left his patrimony to
his school, in whose hands it remained, not only
safe, but fructifying, a marvelous phenomenon in 10
tumultuous Greece, for the long space of eight
hundred years. Epicurus too had the property
of the Gardens where he lectured; and these too
became the property of his sect. But in Roman
times the chairs of grammar, rhetoric, politics, 15
and the four philosophies were handsomely
endowed by the State; some of the Professors
were themselves statesmen or high functionaries,
and brought to their favorite study senatorial
rank or Asiatic opulence. 20

Patrons such as these can compensate to the
freshman, in whom we have interested ourselves,
for the poorness of his lodging and the turbulence
of his companions. In everything there is a
better side and a worse; in every place a 25
disreputable set and a respectable, and the one is
hardly known at all to the other. Men come
away from the same University at this day, with
contradictory impressions and contradictory
statements, according to the society they have found 30
there; if you believe the one, nothing goes on
there as it should be: if you believe the other,
nothing goes on as it should _not_. Virtue,
however, and decency are at least in the minority
everywhere, and under some sort of a cloud or
disadvantage; and this being the case, it is so 5
much gain whenever an Herodes Atticus is found,
to throw the influence of wealth and station on
the side even of a decorous philosophy. A
consular man, and the heir of an ample fortune, this
Herod was content to devote his life to a 10
professorship, and his fortune to the patronage of
literature. He gave the sophist Polemo about
eight thousand pounds, as the sum is calculated,
for three declamations. He built at Athens a
stadium six hundred feet long, entirely of white 15
marble, and capable of admitting the whole
population. His theater, erected to the memory of
his wife, was made of cedar wood curiously carved.
He had two villas, one at Marathon, the place of
his birth, about ten miles from Athens, the other 20
at Cephissia, at the distance of six; and thither
he drew to him the _élite_, and at times the whole
body of the students. Long arcades, groves of
trees, clear pools for the bath, delighted and
recruited the summer visitor. Never was so 25
brilliant a lecture room as his evening
banqueting hall; highly connected students from Rome
mixed with the sharp-witted provincial of Greece
or Asia Minor; and the flippant sciolist, and the
nondescript visitor, half philosopher, half tramp, 30
met with a reception, courteous always, but suitable
to his deserts. Herod was noted for his
repartees; and we have instances on record of
his setting down, according to the emergency,
both the one and the other.

A higher line, though a rarer one, was that 5
allotted to the youthful Basil. He was one of
those men who seem by a sort of fascination to
draw others around them even without wishing
it. One might have deemed that his gravity and
his reserve would have kept them at a distance; 10
but, almost in spite of himself, he was the center
of a knot of youths, who, pagans as most of them
were, used Athens honestly for the purpose for
which they professed to seek it; and, disappointed
and displeased with the place himself, he seems 15
nevertheless to have been the means of their
profiting by its advantages. One of these was
Sophronius, who afterwards held a high office in
the State: Eusebius was another, at that time
the bosom friend of Sophronius, and afterwards 20
a Bishop. Celsus too is named, who afterwards
was raised to the government of Cilicia by the
Emperor Julian. Julian himself, in the sequel of
unhappy memory, was then at Athens, and known
at least to St. Gregory. Another Julian is also 25
mentioned, who was afterwards commissioner of
the land tax. Here we have a glimpse of the better
kind of society among the students of Athens; and
it is to the credit of the parties composing it,
that such young men as Gregory and Basil, men 30
as intimately connected with Christianity, as they
were well known in the world, should hold so high
a place in their esteem and love. When the two
saints were departing, their companions came
around them with the hope of changing their
purpose. Basil persevered; but Gregory relented, 5
and turned back to Athens for a season.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

THE SCHOOLMEN

It is most interesting to observe how the
foundations of the present intellectual greatness
of Europe were laid, and most wonderful to think
that they were ever laid at all. Let us consider 10
how wide and how high is the platform of our
knowledge at this day, and what openings in
every direction are in progress--openings of
such promise, that, unless some convulsion of
society takes place, even what we have attained, 15
will in future times be nothing better than a poor
beginning; and then on the other hand, let us
recollect that, seven centuries ago, putting aside
revealed truths, Europe had little more than that
poor knowledge, partial and uncertain, and at 20
best only practical, which is conveyed to us by the
senses. Even our first principles now are beyond
the most daring conjectures then; and what has
been said so touchingly of Christian ideas as
compared with pagan, is true in its way and degree 25
of the progress of secular knowledge also in the
seven centuries I have named.

"What sages would have died to learn,
[Is] taught by cottage dames."

Nor is this the only point in which the
revelations of science may be compared to the
supernatural revelations of Christianity. Though 5
sacred truth was delivered once for all, and
scientific discoveries are progressive, yet there is
a great resemblance in the respective histories of
Christianity and of Science. We are accustomed
to point to the rise and spread of Christianity as 10
a miraculous fact, and rightly so, on account of
the weakness of its instruments, and the appalling
weight and multiplicity of the obstacles which
confronted it. To clear away those obstacles
was to move mountains; yet this was done by 15
a few poor, obscure, unbefriended men, and
their poor, obscure, unbefriended followers. No
social movement can come up to this marvel,
which is singular and archetypical, certainly;
it is a Divine work, and we soon cease to admire 20
it in order to adore. But there is more in it
than its own greatness to contemplate; it is so
great as to be prolific of greatness. Those whom
it has created, its children who have become such
by a supernatural power, have imitated, in their 25
own acts, the dispensation which made them
what they were; and, though they have not
carried out works simply miraculous, yet they have
done exploits sufficient to bespeak their own
unearthly origin, and the new powers which had 30
come into the world. The revival of letters by
the energy of Christian ecclesiastics and laymen,
when everything had to be done, reminds us of
the birth of Christianity itself, as far as a work of
man can resemble a work of God.

Two characteristics, as I have already had 5
occasion to say, are generally found to attend the
history of Science: first, its instruments have
an innate force, and can dispense with foreign
assistance in their work; and secondly, these
instruments must exist and must begin to act, 10
before subjects are found who are to profit by
their action. In plainer language, the teacher is
strong, not in the patronage of great men, but
in the intrinsic value and attraction of what he
has to communicate; and next, he must come 15
forward and advertise himself, before he can gain
hearers. This I have expressed before, in saying
that a great school of learning lived in demand and
supply, and that the supply must be before the
demand. Now, what is this but the very history 20
of the preaching of the Gospel? who but the
Apostles and Evangelists went out to the ends
of the earth without patron, or friend, or other
external advantage which could insure their
success? and again, who among the multitude they 25
enlightened would have called for their aid unless
they had gone to that multitude first, and offered
to it blessings which up to that moment it had
not heard of? They had no commission, they
had no invitation, from man; their strength lay 30
neither in their being sent, nor in their being sent
for; but in the circumstances that they had that
with them, a Divine message, which they knew
would at once, when it was uttered, thrill through
the hearts of those to whom they spoke, and
make for themselves friends in any place, 5
strangers and outcasts as they were when they first
came. They appealed to the secret wants and
aspirations of human nature, to its laden
conscience, its weariness, its desolateness, and its
sense of the true and the Divine; nor did they 10
long wait for listeners and disciples, when they
announced the remedy of evils which were so real.

Something like this were the first stages of the
process by which in mediæval Christendom the
structure of our present intellectual elevation 15
was carried forward. From Rome as from a
center, as the Apostles from Jerusalem, went
forth the missionaries of knowledge, passing to
and fro all over Europe; and, as Metropolitan
sees were the record of the presence of Apostles, 20
so did Paris, Pavia, and Bologna, and Padua,
and Ferrara, Pisa and Naples, Vienna, Louvain,
and Oxford, rise into Universities at the voice of
the theologian or the philosopher. Moreover, as
the Apostles went through labors untold, by 25
sea and land, in their charity to souls; so, if
robbers, shipwrecks, bad lodging, and scanty fare
are trials of zeal, such trials were encountered
without hesitation by the martyrs and confessors
of science. And as Evangelists had grounded 30
their teaching upon the longing for happiness
natural to man, so did these securely rest their
cause on the natural thirst for knowledge: and
again as the preachers of Gospel peace had often
to bewail the ruin which persecution or
dissension had brought upon their nourishing colonies, 5
so also did the professors of science often find or
flee the ravages of sword or pestilence in those
places, which they themselves perhaps in former
times had made the seats of religious, honorable,
and useful learning. And lastly, as kings and 10
nobles have fortified and advanced the interests
of the Christian faith without being necessary
to it, so in like manner we may enumerate with
honor Charlemagne, Alfred, Henry the First of
England, Joan of Navarre, and many others, as 15
patrons of the schools of learning, without being
obliged to allow that those schools could not have
progressed without such countenance.

These are some of the points of resemblance
between the propagation of Christian truth and 20
the revival of letters; and, to return to the two
points, to which I have particularly drawn
attention, the University Professor's confidence in his
own powers, and his taking the initiative in the
exercise of them, I find both these distinctly 25
recognized by Mr. Hallam in his history of Literature.
As to the latter point, he says, "The schools of
Charlemagne were designed to lay the basis of a
learned education, _for which there was at that time
no sufficient desire_"--that is, the supply was 30
prior to the demand. As to the former: "In
the twelfth century," he says, "the _impetuosity_
with which men _rushed_ to that source of what
they deemed wisdom, the great University of
Paris, _did not depend upon academical privileges
or eleemosynary stipends_, though these were 5
undoubtedly very effectual in keeping it up. The
University _created patrons, and was not created
by them_"--that is, demand and supply were all
in all....

Bec, a poor monastery of Normandy, set up in 10
the eleventh century by an illiterate soldier, who
sought the cloister, soon attracted scholars to its
dreary clime from Italy, and transmitted them
to England. Lanfranc, afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury, was one of these, and he found the 15
simple monks so necessitous, that he opened a
school of logic to all comers, in order, says William
of Malmesbury, "that he might support his needy
monastery by the pay of the students." The
same author adds, that "his reputation went into 20
the most remote parts of the Latin world, and
Bec became a great and famous Academy of
letters." Here is an instance of a
commencement without support, without scholars, in order
to attract scholars, and in them to find support. 25
William of Jumièges, too, bears witness to the
effect, powerful, sudden, wide spreading, and
various, of Lanfranc's advertisement of himself.
The fame of Bec and Lanfranc, he says, quickly
penetrated through the whole world; and "clerks, 30
the sons of dukes, the most esteemed masters of
the Latin schools, powerful laymen, high nobles,
flocked to him." What words can more strikingly
attest the enthusiastic character of the movement
which he began, than to say that it carried away
with it all classes; rich as well as poor, laymen as 5
well as ecclesiastics, those who were in that day
in the habit of despising letters, as well as those
who might wish to live by them?...

THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF UNIVERSITIES

ABELARD

We can have few more apposite illustrations
of at once the strength and weakness of what 10
may be called the University principle, of what
it can do and what it cannot, of its power to
collect students, and its impotence to preserve and
edify them, than the history of the celebrated
Abelard. His name is closely associated with 15
the commencement of the University of Paris;
and in his popularity and in his reverses, in the
criticisms of John of Salisbury on his method,
and the protest of St. Bernard against his
teaching, we read, as in a pattern specimen, what a 20
University professes in its essence, and what it
needs for its "integrity." It is not to be supposed,
that I am prepared to show this here, as fully as
it might be shown; but it is a subject so
pertinent to the general object of these Essays, that it 25
may be useful to devote even a few pages to it.

The oracles of Divine Truth, as time goes on,
do but repeat the one message from above which
they have ever uttered, since the tongues of fire
attested the coming of the Paraclete; still, as
time goes on, they utter it with greater force and 5
precision, under diverse forms, with fuller
luminousness, and a richer ministration of thought
statement, and argument. They meet the
varying wants, and encounter the special resistance
of each successive age; and, though prescient of 10
coming errors and their remedy long before, they
cautiously reserve their new enunciation of the
old Truth, till it is imperatively demanded. And,
as it happens in kings' cabinets, that surmises
arise, and rumors spread, of what is said in 15
council, and is in course of preparation, and secrets
perhaps get wind, true in substance or in direction,
though distorted in detail; so too, before the
Church speaks, one or other of her forward
children speaks for her, and, while he does anticipate 20
to a certain point what she is about to say or
enjoin, he states it incorrectly, makes it error
instead of truth, and risks his own faith in the
process. Indeed, this is actually one source, or
rather concomitant, of heresy, the presence of 25
some misshapen, huge, and grotesque foreshadow
of true statements which are to come. Speaking
under correction, I would apply this remark to
the heresy of Tertullian or of Sabellius, which may
be considered a reaction from existing errors, and 30
an attempt, presumptuous, and therefore unsuccessful,
to meet them with those divinely
appointed correctives which the Church alone can
apply, and which she will actually apply, when
the proper moment comes. The Gnostics boasted
of their intellectual proficiency before the time 5
of St. Irenæus, St. Athanasius, and St.
Augustine; yet, when these doctors made their
appearance, I suppose they were examples of that
knowledge, true and deep, which the Gnostics
professed. Apollinaris anticipated the work of 10
St. Cyril and the Ephesine Council, and became
a heresiarch in consequence; and, to come down
to the present times, we may conceive that
writers, who have impatiently fallen away from
the Church, because she would not adopt their 15
views, would have found, had they but trusted
her, and waited, that she knew how to profit by
them, though she never could have need to
borrow her enunciations from them; for their
writings contained, so to speak, truth _in the ore_, truth 20
which they themselves had not the gift to
disengage from its foreign concomitants, and safely
use, which she alone could use, which she would
use in her destined hour, and which became their
stone of stumbling simply because she did not 25
use it faster. Now, applying this principle to
the subject before us, I observe, that, supposing
Abelard to be the first master of scholastic
philosophy, as many seem to hold, we shall have still
no difficulty in condemning the author, while we 30
honor the work. To him is only the glory of
spoiling by his own self-will what would have
been done well and surely under the teaching
and guidance of Infallible Authority.

Nothing is more certain than that some ideas
are consistent with one another, and others 5
inconsistent; and, again, that every truth must be
consistent with every other truth--hence, that
all truths of whatever kind form into one large
body of Truth, by virtue of the consistency
between one truth and another, which is a 10
connecting link running through them all. The science
which discovers this connection is logic; and,
as it discovers the connection when the truths are
given, so, having one truth given and the
connecting principle, it is able to go on to ascertain 15
the other. Though all this is obvious, it was
realized and acted on in the middle age with
a distinctness unknown before; all subjects of
knowledge were viewed as parts of one vast
system, each with its own place in it, and from 20
knowing one, another was inferred. Not indeed
always rightly inferred, because the art might
be less perfect than the science, the instrument
than the theory and aim; but I am speaking of
the principle of the scholastic method, of which 25
Saints and Doctors were the teachers--such
I conceive it to be, and Abelard was the ill-fated
logician who had a principal share in bringing it
into operation.

Others will consider the great St. Anselm and 30
the school of Bec, as the proper source of Scholasticism;
I am not going to discuss the question;
anyhow, Abelard, and not St. Anselm, was the
Professor at the University of Paris, and it is
of Universities that I am speaking; anyhow,
Abelard illustrates the strength and the 5
weakness of the principle of advertising and
communicating knowledge for its own sake, which I have
called the University principle, whether he is,
or is not, the first of scholastic philosophers or
scholastic theologians. And, though I could not 10
speak of him at all without mentioning the
subject of his teaching, yet, after all, it is of him and
of his teaching itself, that I am going to speak,
whatever that might be which he actually taught.

Since Charlemagne's time the schools of Paris 15
had continued, with various fortunes, faithful, as
far as the age admitted, to the old learning, as
other schools elsewhere, when, in the eleventh
century, the famous school of Bec began to
develop the powers of logic in forming a new 20
philosophy. As the inductive method rose in
Bacon, so did the logical in the mediæval
schoolmen; and Aristotle, the most comprehensive
intellect of Antiquity, as the one who had
conceived the sublime idea of mapping the whole 25
field of knowledge, and subjecting all things to
one profound analysis, became the presiding
master in their lecture halls. It was at the end
of the eleventh century that William of
Champeaux founded the celebrated Abbey of St. 30
Victor under the shadow of St. Geneviève, and by
the dialectic methods which he introduced into his
teaching, has a claim to have commenced the
work of forming the University out of the Schools
of Paris. For one at least, out of the two
characteristics of a University, he prepared the way; 5
for, though the schools were not public till after
his day, so as to admit laymen as well as clerks,
and foreigners as well as natives of the place, yet
the logical principle of constructing all sciences
into one system, implied of course a recognition 10
of all the sciences that are comprehended in it.
Of this William of Champeaux, or de Campellis,
Abelard was the pupil; he had studied the
dialectic art elsewhere, before he offered himself for
his instructions; and, in the course of two years, 15
when as yet he had only reached the age of
twenty-two, he made such progress, as to be
capable of quarreling with his master, and
setting up a school for himself.

This school of Abelard was first situated in 20
the royal castle of Melun; then at Corbeil, which
was nearer to Paris, and where he attracted to
himself a considerable number of hearers. His
labors had an injurious effect upon his health;
and at length he withdrew for two years to his 25
native Britanny. Whether other causes coöperated
in this withdrawal, I think, is not known;
but, at the end of the two years, we find him
returning to Paris, and renewing his attendance
on the lectures of William, who was by this time 30
a monk. Rhetoric was the subject of the lectures
he now heard; and after a while the pupil
repeated with greater force and success his
former treatment of his teacher. He held a
public disputation with him, got the victory,
and reduced him to silence. The school of 5
William was deserted, and its master himself became
an instance of the vicissitudes incident to that
gladiatorial wisdom (as I may style it) which was
then eclipsing the old Benedictine method of the
Seven Arts. After a time, Abelard found his 10
reputation sufficient to warrant him in setting
up a school himself on Mount St. Geneviève;
whence he waged incessant war against the
unwearied logician, who by this time had rallied
his forces to repel the young and ungrateful 15
adventurer who had raised his hand against him.

Great things are done by devotion to one idea;
there is one class of geniuses, who would never
be what they are, could they grasp a second.
The calm philosophical mind, which 20
contemplates parts without denying the whole, and the
whole without confusing the parts, is notoriously
indisposed to action; whereas single and simple
views arrest the mind, and hurry it on to carry
them out. Thus, men of one idea and nothing 25
more, whatever their merit, must be to a certain
extent narrow-minded; and it is not wonderful
that Abelard's devotion to the new philosophy
made him undervalue the Seven Arts out of which
it had grown. He felt it impossible so to honor 30
what was now to be added, as not to dishonor
what existed before. He would not suffer the
Arts to have their own use, since he had found a
new instrument for a new purpose. So he
opposed the reading of the Classics. The monks
had opposed them before him; but this is little 5
to our present purpose; it was the duty of men,
who abjured the gifts of this world on the
principle of mortification, to deny themselves
literature just as they would deny themselves
particular friendships or figured music. The doctrine 10
which Abelard introduced and represents was
founded on a different basis. He did not
recognize in the poets of antiquity any other merit
than that of furnishing an assemblage of elegant
phrases and figures; and accordingly he asks 15
why they should not be banished from the city
of God, since Plato banished them from his own
commonwealth. The _animus_ of this language is
clear, when we turn to the pages of John of
Salisbury and Peter of Blois, who were champions of 20
the ancient learning. We find them complaining
that the careful "getting up," as we now call it,
"of books," was growing out of fashion. Youths
once studied critically the text of poets or
philosophers; they got them by heart; they analyzed 25
their arguments; they noted down their fallacies;
they were closely examined in the matters which
had been brought before them in lecture; they
composed. But now, another teaching was
coming in; students were promised truth in a 30
nutshell; they intended to get possession of the sum-total
of philosophy in less than two or three
years; and facts were apprehended, not in their
substance and details, by means of living and,
as it were, personal documents, but in dead
abstracts and tables. Such were the 5
reclamations to which the new Logic gave occasion.

These, however, are lesser matters; we have
a graver quarrel with Abelard than that of his
undervaluing the Classics. As I have said, my
main object here is not what he taught, but why 10
and how, and how he lived. Now it is certain
his activity was stimulated by nothing very high,
but something very earthly and sordid. I grant
there is nothing morally wrong in the mere desire
to rise in the world, though Ambition and it are 15
twin sisters. I should not blame Abelard merely
for wishing to distinguish himself at the
University; but when he makes the ecclesiastical
state the instrument of his ambition, mixes up
spiritual matters with temporal, and aims at a 20
bishopric through the medium of his logic, he
joins together things incompatible, and cannot
complain of being censured. It is he himself,
who tells us, unless my memory plays me false,
that the circumstance of William of Champeaux 25
being promoted to the see of Chalons, was an
incentive to him to pursue the same path with an
eye to the same reward. Accordingly, we next
hear of his attending the theological lectures of
a certain master of William's, named Anselm, an 30
old man, whose school was situated at Laon. This
person had a great reputation in his day; John
of Salisbury, speaking of him in the next
generation, calls him the doctor of doctors; he had been
attended by students from Italy and Germany;
but the age had advanced since he was in his 5
prime, and Abelard was disappointed in a teacher,
who had been good enough for William. He left
Anselm, and began to lecture on the prophet
Ezekiel on his own resources.

Now came the time of his great popularity, 10
which was more than his head could bear; which
dizzied him, took him off his legs, and whirled
him to his destruction. I spoke in my foregoing
Chapter of those three qualities of true wisdom,
which a University, absolutely and nakedly 15
considered, apart from the safeguards which
constitute its integrity, is sure to compromise.
Wisdom, says the inspired writer, is _desursum_, is
_pudica_, is _pacifica_, "from above, chaste,
peaceable." We have already seen enough of Abelard's 20
career to understand that his wisdom, instead of
being "pacifica," was ambitious and contentious.
An Apostle speaks of the tongue both as a blessing
and as a curse. It may be the beginning of a fire,
he says, a "Universitas iniquitatis;" and alas! 25
such did it become in the mouth of the gifted
Abelard. His eloquence was wonderful; he
dazzled his contemporaries, says Fulco, "by the
brilliancy of his genius, the sweetness of his
eloquence, the ready flow of his language, and the 30
subtlety of his knowledge." People came to
him from all quarters--from Rome, in spite of
mountains and robbers; from England, in spite
of the sea; from Flanders and Germany; from
Normandy, and the remote districts of France;
from Angers and Poitiers; from Navarre by the 5
Pyrenees, and from Spain, besides the students
of Paris itself; and among those, who sought his
instructions now or afterwards, were the great
luminaries of the schools in the next generation.
Such were Peter of Poitiers, Peter Lombard, John 10
of Salisbury, Arnold of Brescia, Ivo, and Geoffrey
of Auxerre. It was too much for a weak head
and heart, weak in spite of intellectual power;
for vanity will possess the head, and worldliness
the heart, of the man, however gifted, whose 15
wisdom is not an effluence of the Eternal Light.

True wisdom is not only "pacifica," it is
"pudica;" chaste as well as peaceable. Alas for
Abelard! a second disgrace, deeper than
ambition, is his portion now. The strong man--the 20
Samson of the schools in the wildness of his course,
the Solomon in the fascination of his
genius--shivers and falls before the temptation which
overcame that mighty pair, the most excelling
in body and in mind. 25

In a time when Colleges were unknown, and the
young scholar was commonly thrown upon the
dubious hospitality of a great city, Abelard might
even be thought careful of his honor, that he
went to lodge with an old ecclesiastic, had not 30
his host's niece Eloisa lived with him. A more
subtle snare was laid for him than beset the
heroic champion or the all-accomplished monarch of
Israel; for sensuality came upon him under the
guise of intellect, and it was the high mental
endowments of Eloisa, who became his pupil, 5
speaking in her eyes, and thrilling on her tongue,
which were the intoxication and the delirium of
Abelard....

He is judged, he is punished; but he is not
reclaimed. True wisdom is not only "pacifica," 10
not only "pudica;" it is "desursum" too. It is
a revelation from above; it knows heresy as
little as it knows strife or license. But Abelard,
who had run the career of earthly wisdom in two
of its phases, now is destined to represent its 15
third.

It is at the famous Abbey of St. Denis that we
find him languidly rising from his dream of sin,
and the suffering that followed. The bad dream
is cleared away; clerks come to him, and the 20
Abbot begging him to lecture still, for love
now, as for gain before. Once more his school is
thronged by the curious and the studious; but
at length a rumor spreads, that Abelard is
exploring the way to some novel view on the 25
subject of the Most Holy Trinity. Wherefore is
hardly clear, but about the same time the monks
drive him away from the place of refuge he had
gained. He betakes himself to a cell, and thither
his pupils follow him. "I betook myself to a 30
certain cell," he says, "wishing to give myself to
the schools, as was my custom. Thither so great
a multitude of scholars flocked, that there was
neither room to house them, nor fruits of the
earth to feed them," such was the enthusiasm of
the student, such the attraction of the teacher, 5
when knowledge was advertised freely, and its
market opened.

Next he is in Champagne, in a delightful
solitude near Nogent in the diocese of Troyes. Here
the same phenomenon presents itself, which is 10
so frequent in his history. "When the scholars
knew it," he says, "they began to crowd thither
from all parts; and, leaving other cities and
strongholds, they were content to dwell in the
wilderness. For spacious houses they framed for 15
themselves small tabernacles, and for delicate food they
put up with wild herbs. Secretly did they
whisper among themselves: 'Behold, the whole
world is gone out after him!' When, however,
my Oratory could not hold even a moderate 20
portion of them, then they were forced to enlarge
it, and to build it up with wood and stone."
He called the place his Paraclete, because it had
been his consolation.

I do not know why I need follow his life further. 25
I have said enough to illustrate the course of one,
who may be called the founder, or at least the first
great name, of the Parisian Schools. After the
events I have mentioned he is found in Lower
Britanny; then, being about forty-eight years of 30
age, in the Abbey of St. Gildas; then with St.
Geneviève again. He had to sustain the fiery
eloquence of a Saint, directed against his novelties;
he had to present himself before two Councils;
he had to burn the book which had given offense
to pious ears. His last two years were spent at 5
Clugni on his way to Rome. The home of the
weary, the hospital of the sick, the school of the
erring, the tribunal of the penitent, is the city
of St. Peter. He did not reach it; but he is
said to have retracted what had given scandal in 10
his writings, and to have made an edifying end.
He died at the age of sixty-two, in the year of
grace 1142.

In reviewing his career, the career of so great
an intellect so miserably thrown away, we are 15
reminded of the famous words of the dying
scholar and jurist, which are a lesson to us all,
"Heu, vitam perdidi, operosè nihil agendo." A
happier lot be ours!