by the Church a philosophical demonstration. To him Realism was the
orthodox philosophical doctrine because it was the one most in harmony
with Christian theology. He applied philosophical arguments to the
explanation of those tenets of the faith which later scholastic
writers placed among the mysteries to be accepted without question.

[Sidenote: Abailard.]

The reputed founder of definite Realism was William of Champeaux
(1060-1121), a pupil of Roscelin himself, a teacher at Paris, and
ultimately Bishop of Chalons. By the account of his enemy Abailard, he
held an uncompromising Realism which maintained that the Universal was
a substance or thing which was present in its entirety in each
individual. It was the presence of such crude Realism as this which
gave his opportunity to the greatest teacher of this early period of
Scholasticism, Peter Abailard (1079-1142). A pupil of both Roscelin
and William of Champeaux--the two extremes of Nominalism and
Realism--he aimed in his teaching at arriving at a _via media_ to
which subsequent writers have given the name Conceptualism. According
to him the individual is the only true substance, and the genus is
that which is asserted of a number of individuals; it is therefore a
name used as a sign--a concept, although he does not use the word.
Thus he does not condemn the Realistic theory borrowed from Plato, of
Universals as having an existence of their own; he regards them as
ideas or exemplars which existed in the divine mind before the
creation of things. But he opposes the tendency in Realism to treat as
identical the qualities which resemble each other in different
individuals, since that abolishes the personality of the individual
which to him is the only reality. Like Roscelin he did not hesitate to
apply his dialectic to theology. Here, while repudiating the tritheism