Descartes had proclaimed his famous
conceptual proof of God: 'I am conscious of myself, and must exist;
I am conscious of God and He must exist.' Pascal wearily replied
that it was not God he doubted, but logic. He was tortured by the
impossibility of rejecting man's reason by reason; unconsciously
sceptical, he forced himself to disbelieve in himself rather than
admit a doubt of God. Man had tried to prove God, and had failed:
'The metaphysical proofs of God are so remote (_eloignees_) from the
reasoning of men, and so contradictory (_impliquees_, far fetched)
that they made little impression; and even if they served to
convince some people, it would only be during the instant that they
see the demonstration; an hour afterwards they fear to have
deceived themselves.'"
Abelard was always, as he has been called, a scholastic adventurer,
a philosophical and theological freelance, and it was after the
Calamity that he followed those courses that resulted finally in
his silencing and his obscure death. It is almost impossible for us
of modern times to understand the violence of partisanship aroused
by his actions and published words that centre apparently around
the placing of the hermitage he had made for himself under the
patronage of the third Person of the Trinity, the Paraclete, the
Spirit of love and compassion and consolation, and the consequent
arguments by which he justified himself.
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