of dwelling upon the adumbrations of Christian truth
which he found in Plato. Plato, he says, conceived of
God as of an artificer who planned and ordered everything
before he made it : in this wise he considers the pattern-
forms, which he calls the ideas, in the divine mind ; and these
afterwards Providence, as after the fashion of a consummate
workman, carried into effect. Such a suggestion (Abailard
does not mean it as an explanation, for the truth, he
avers, surpasses human understanding) may help to make
us guess at the relation between the Father and the Son,
and that of the Holy Spirit to both. In the same way our
theologian took the doctrine of the universal Soul, the
anima mundi, as a convincing proof of his favourite position
that intimations of the divirie mysteries were vouchsafed
to the Greek philosophers. He seeks to shew that it
^ can be reconciled with the Christian faith in the holy
Spirit ; but he does not presume to identify the two ideas. [1]
The doctrine by itself, he says, is a dark saying veiled in
figure ; taken literally it would be the height of absurdity :
Christianity, he seems to infer, has supplied the means of
solving the enigma and bringing it into harmony with the
perfect truth. Abailard’s prudence was however not
followed by every one ; and William of Conches, the uncompromising Platonist, who, as we have seen, appears to have borrowed a good deal from a somewhat perfunctory study of Abailard, decided without hesitation that the Holy Ghost and the universal Soul were convertible terms,[2]
- ↑ In his Dialectic, Ouvrages inedits, 476, he expressly repudiates the idea ; but although it had previously had an attraction for him, I cannot agree with Cousin (ibid., intr. pp. xxxiii, xxxiv, or in the Fragments philosophiques, 2. 35) that he had ever professed the doctrine.
- ↑ Anima igitur mundi, secundum quosdam, Spiritus sanctus est. Divina enim voluntate et bonitate, quae Spiritus sanctus est, ut praediximus, omnia vivunt quae in mundo vivunt : Philos. i. 15, Bed. Opp. 2. 313, or Max. Biblioth. Patr. 20. 998 ir. Here it is only stated as one of several opinions on the subject. But the decisive passage occurs in William’s Commentary on the Consolation of Boethius, of which specimens are printed by Jourdain in the Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits, 20 (2). The place in question to be quoted : Anima mundi est naturalis vigor quo habent quedam res tantum moveri, quedam crescere, quedam sentire, quedam discernere. Sed qui sit ille vigor queritur. Sed, ut mihi videtur, ille vigor naturalis est
