says Saint John's Gospel, and this, he thought, proves the dignity of Logic.
His chief importance is in logic and theory of knowledge. His philosophy is a critical analysis,
largely linguistic. As for universals, i. e., what can be predicated of many different things, he
holds that we do not predicate a thing, but a word. In this sense he is a nominalist. But as
against Roscelin he points out that a "flatus vocis" is a thing; it is not the word as a physical
occurrence that we predicate, but the word as meaning. Here he appeals to Aristotle. Things, he
says, resemble each other, and these resemblances give rise to universals. But the point of
resemblance between two similar things is not itself a thing; this is the mistake of realism. He
says some things that are even more hostile to realism, for example, that general concepts are
not based in the nature of things, but are confused images of many things. Nevertheless he does
not wholly refuse a place to Platonic ideas: they exist in the divine mind as patterns for creation;
they are, in fact, God's concepts.
All this, whether right or wrong, is certainly very able. The most modern discussions of the
problem of universals have not got much further.
Saint Bernard, whose saintliness did not suffice to make him intelligent, * failed to understand
Abélard, and brought unjust accusations against him. He asserted that Abélard treats the
Trinity like an Arian, grace like a Pelagian, and the Person of Christ like a Nestorian; that he
proves himself a heathen in sweating to prove Plato a Christian; and further, that he destroys the
merit of the Christian faith by maintaining that God can be completely understood by human
reason. In fact, Abélard never maintained this last, and always left a large province to faith,
although, like Saint Anselm, he thought that the Trinity could be rationally demonstrated
without the help of revelation. It is true that, at one time, he identified the Holy Ghost with the
Platonic Soul of the World, but he abandoned this view as soon as its heretical character was
pointed out to him. Probably it was more his combativeness than his doctrines that caused him
to be accused of heresy, for his habit of criticizing pundits made him violently unpopular with
all influential persons.
* "The greatness of St. Bernard lay not in the qualities of his intellect, but of his character."--
Encyclopædia Britannica.