302          MONT-SAINT-MICHEL AND CHARTRES
Supposing that Abélard took the opposite course, and answered: —
"No! my concept is a mere sign."
"A sign of what, in God's name!"
"A sound! a word! a symbol! an echo only of my ignorance."
"Nothing, then! So truth and virtue and charity do not exist at
all. You suppose yourself to exist, but you have no means of knowing
God; therefore, to you God does not exist except as an echo of your
ignorance; and, what concerns you most, the Church does not exist
except as your concept of certain individuals, whom you cannot regard
as a unity, and who suppose themselves to believe in a Trinity which
exists only as a sound, or a symbol. I will not repeat your words, M.
du Pallet, outside this cloister, because the consequences to you would
certainly be fatal; but it is only too clear that you are a materialist,
and as such your fate must be decided by a Church Council, unless
you prefer the stake by judgment of a secular court.
In truth, pure nominalism — if, indeed, any one ever maintained
it — afforded no cover whatever. Nor did Abélard's concept help the
matter, although for want of a better refuge, the Church was often
driven into it. Conceptualism was a device, like the false wooden
roof, to cover and conceal an inherent weakness of construction. Unity
either is, or is not. If soldiers, no matter in what number, can never
make an army, and worshippers, though in millions, do not make a
Church, and all humanity united would not necessarily constitute a
State, equally little can their concepts, individual or united, constitute
the one or the other. Army, Church, and State, each is an organic
whole, complex beyond all possible addition of units, and not a con-
cept at all, but rather an animal that thinks, creates, devours, and
destroys. The attempt to bridge the chasm between multiplicity and
unity is the oldest problem of philosophy, religion, and science, but
the flimsiest bridge of all is the human concept, unless somewhere,
within or beyond it, an energy not individual is hidden ; and in that
case the old question instantly reappears: What is that energy?