her bosom. It is hard I know, but upon no other condition shalt thou have any fellowship with thy generation. It may be, some German will hereafter journey far to listen to thy eloquent voice, whose descendant, in a more propitious age, shall conquer for men the privilege of obeying God. Go on, then, in thy logical knight-errantry; thus unconsciously shalt thou teach others to freely think and freely act. Aristotle, Porphyry, and Boethius, cannot afford thee the best of mental nutriment, and thou art not skilled to read nature and the soul; yet, if thou wilt persevere, all the men of thy times shall soon be left behind. I fear thou art sadly neglecting one book, but never mind now, Mother Church will not curse thee for that.

Abelard, in the course of his philosophic adventures, must have met with the celebrated John* Roscelin, who first pushed nominalism to its extreme consequences. In 1092, when Abelard was twelve years

of

age, the doctrine of Roscelin had been condemned by a council held at Soissons. Denying the reality of universals, it seems, endangered some of the dogmas of the Church. St. Anselm, Abbé of Bec, in Normandy, who was highly esteemed among the religious orders, and enjoyed a great reputation as a philosopher, who was expecting to succeed Lanfranc

* M. Cousin: Introduction to the Ouvr. ined. d'Ab., p. 40.

as Archbishop of Canterbury, had from the beginning supported realism against the nominalism of Roscelin. Anselm served the Church and gained the object of his ambition. Roscelin sought for the true in itself, and was banished. We do not know precisely when, or where, or how Roscelin, and Abelard met. They were brother Bretons, and perhaps thought it were not best for Greek to encounter Greek. Abelard heard the lectures of Roscelin, who was then canon of Compiegn, and probably carried away in his retentive memory the arguments that were used to substantiate a new system.

Thus are spent the youthful days of Abelard. Philosophy he is serving with the devotion of a true lover; but time shall teach him that Life cannot be fathomed by any plummet of Thought.

IV.

AN EPISODE: THE FIRST CRUSADE.

WHILE Abelard was pursuing his philosophic adventures, Peter the Hermit was preaching the first crusade. The young logical knight-errant did not seem to be affected by the movement that was convulsing all France, nearly all Europe. Like a true philosopher, he was unmindful of every thing that did not pertain to thought, to the everlasting principles of mind.

The first crusade-all the other crusades were only repetitions or imitations of that—was the greatest movement of the Middle Age. The preaching of Peter the Hermit in the year 1095 was not its beginning. It had its origin in one of the constituent principles of the society of the times. Ideas are at the basis of every human organization, whether in church or in state. Modern society has taken the place of that of the Middle Age, because the ideas of men have changed. Belief in the benefit of pilgrimages and crusades was one of the characteristics of those times.

Man's condition of being on this planet is that of a pilgrimage. Each age has its place, to which it joyfully, yet often painfully, wanders. Wearily, wearily journeys the Arab to Mecca. Cold is the heart of that Christian who has never desired to gaze upon the tomb of his Redeemer. In the middle age, pilgrims, with staff in hand, journeyed to Jerusalem, willing to endure any fatigue, braving dangers, bearing humiliations. "Happy he who returned! Happier still he who died near the tomb of Christ, and who could exclaim in the presumptuous language of a writer of the time, Lord, you died for me, I die for you.'"

The pilgrimages to Jerusalem commenced about the year 1000. At first the pilgrims were kindly received by the Arabs, and soon their numbers became immense. "About the same time so countless a multitude began to flock from every quarter of the globe, to the sepulchre of our Saviour at Jerusalem, such as no man could before hope for-the common people ....middling classes.... kings and counts.... bishops

many nobles, together with poorer women.... It was the heartfelt wish of many to die before they returned home."* When the Caliph Hakem, the son of a Christian woman, pretended to be the incarnation of the Divinity, Christians and Jews were alike persecuted by

* Pierre D'Auvergne, ap. Raynouard, Choix de Poesies des Troubadours, iv. 115.—Rad. Glaber, 1. iv. c. 6, ap. Ser. R. Ser. x. 50. Quoted by Michelet.

him. The former persisted in believing that the Messiah had come, and the latter persisted in believing that he was to come. Both, consequently, opposed the pretensions of the Caliph Hakem. By his command, no one could approach the holy sepulchre except on the condition of defiling it. The danger increased, and the desire to visit Jerusalem also increased. Whole armies of pilgrims sometimes failed to reach the sepulchre. There often remained only a few worn-out survivors, to tell of the hardships and heroic death of their companions, thereby exciting others to undertake the same perilous, yet glorious journey. At length, in the last quarter of the eleventh century, the Turks obtained possession of Jerusalem and massacred Christians and Alides,-all believers in the incarnation.

Shall pilgrimages to the holy city cease then? Will Christian Europe incur the penalty of leaving the Redeemer's sepulchre in the hands of infidels ? No; the invasion of the East must be re-enacted in a vaster form, and for the realization of a loftier idea. The Greeks invaded Asia for the purpose of conquest, for the purpose of extending their civilization. The cause of the Past and the cause of the Future then met, but the ideas that animated both sides were political ideas, merely those of Empire. In the Middle Age the East and the West must again meet,