the two, though he insists, in language very Aristotelian, on the distinction between First and Second Substance."

Through the translations and manuals of Boëthius and others, the Categories of Aristotle were transmitted to the Latin Churchmen, and continued to be read even through the darkest ages, when the Analytica and the Topica were unknown or neglected. The Aristotelian discrimination between First and Second Substance was thus always kept in sight, and Boëthius treated it much in the same manner as Porphyry had done before him.† Alcuin, Rhabanus Maurus, and Eric of Auxerre, in the eighth and ninth centuries, repeated what they found in Boëthius, and upheld the Aristotelian tradition unimpaired. But SCOTUS ERIGENA (d. 880 A.D.) took an entirely opposite view, and reverted to the Platonic traditions, though with a large admixture of Aristotelian ideas. He was a Christian Platonist, blending the transcendentalism of Plato and Plotinus with theological dogmatic influences (derived from the Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita and others) and verging somewhat even towards Pantheism. Scotus Erigena revived the doctrine of Cogitable Universalia extra rem and ante rem. He declared express opposition to the arrangement of the First Aristotelian Category, whereby the individual was put first, in the character of subject; the Universal second, in the character only of predicate; complete reality belonging to the two in conjunction. Scotus maintained that the Cogitable or Incorporeal Universal was the first, the true and complete real; from whence the sensible individuals were secondary, incomplete, multiple, derivatives.|| But though he thus adopts and enforces the Platonic theory of Universalia ante rem and extra rem, he does not think himself obliged to deny that Universalia may be in re also.

The contradiction of the Aristotelian traditions, so far as concerns the First Category, thus proclaimed by Scotus Erigena, appears to have provoked considerable opposition among his immediate successors. Nevertheless, he also obtained partizans. Remigius of Auxerre and others not only defended the Platonic Realism, but carried it as far as Plato himself had done; affirming that not only Universal Substances, but also Universal Accidents, had a real separate existence, apart from and anterior to individuals. The controversy for and against the Platonic Realism was thus distinctly launched in the schools of the middle ages.

• Prantl-Geschichte der Logik. Vol. I., sect. 11, p. 634, n. 69. Upon this account, Prantl finds Porphyry guilty of empiricism in its extreme crudeness'—'jene aüsserste Rohheit des Empirismus.'

+ Prantl-Geschichte der Logik. Vol. I., sect. 12, p. 685; Vol. II., sect. 1, p. 4-7. Trendelenburg-Kategorienlehre, p. 245.

Ueberweg-Geschichte der Philosophie der patristischen und scholastischen Zeit, sect. 21, p. 115, ed. 2nd.

Prantl-Gesch. der Logik. Vol. II., ch. 13, p. 29-35.

Ueberweg-Geschicht der Philos., sect. 21, p. 113. Prantl-Gesch. der Logik, Vol. II., ch. 13, 44, 45-47.

It was upheld both as a philosophical revival, and as theologically orthodox, entitled to supersede the traditional counter-theory of Aristotle.

It has been stated above, that it was through Porphyry's Isagoge (in the translation of Boëthius) that the schoolmen became acquainted with the ancient dispute as to the nature of Universals. Of Plato's doctrines, except in a translation of part of the Timæus, they had for a long time only second-hand knowledge, chiefly through St. Augustin; of Aristotle, they knew down to the middle of the twelfth century, only the Categories and the De Interpre tatione in translation, and not, until the beginning of the thirteenth, others besides the logical works. Down to about this time, logic or dialectic being the whole of philosophy, the question as to Universals almost excluded every other; and, even later, when the field of philosophy became much wider, it never lost the first place as long as scholasticism remained dominant.

Rather more than two centuries after the death of Scotus Erigena (about the end of the eleventh), the question was eagerly disputed, in its bearings upon the theological dogma of the Trinity, between ROSCELLIN, a canon of Compiègne, and ANSELM, Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselm maintained that all individual men were in specie homo unus, and formed a real unity; so too, although every person in the Godhead was perfect God, they were but one God. To this realistic doctrine, Roscellin (of whom very little is known), founding upon some of his immediate precursors, opposed a theory different from the Aristotelian. Maintaining with Aristotle, and even more strongly than Aristotle, that the individual particulars were the only real entities, he declared that, in genera and species, the individuals were held together only subjectively by means of a general name, bestowed upon them for their points of similarity. The Universals were neither ante rem (with Plato), nor in re (with Aristotle), but post rem; and in themselves were nothing at all beyond voces or nomina. Roscellin appears to have carried out the theory consistently, and not merely with reference to the special theological question. So far as that was concerned, he was not afraid to pronounce that the three persons were three individual Gods; and thereupon, his theology being condemned by an ecclesiastical council, the theory became suspect, and so remained until the late period of scholasticism. Its supporters were called by the name vocales or nominales, Nominalists; and it was at the same period of excited feeling that the name realis, Realist, was first used to designate the upholders of the ancient doctrine, as held either in the Platonic or the Aristotelian form.

To what lengths the discussion of the question was carried in the century that elapsed from the time of Anselm and Roscellin till the beginning of the second period of scholasticism, may be seen in a list drawn up by Prantl (Gesch. d. Log. II., pp. 118-21) of not less than thirteen distinct opinions, or shades of opinion, held by different schoolmen. Of these, the most distinguished

AQUINAS.-DUNS SCOTUS.-OCKHAM.

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was ABAELARD (1079-1142), who took up a position between the extremes of Realism and Nominalism. On the one hand, he denied the independent existence of Universals, and inclined rather to the Aristotelian view of their immanence in rebus; on the other, he inveighed against the nominalism of Roscellin, and pronounced that the Universals were not mere voces, but sermones or predications. Yet it is a mistake to describe him as a Conceptualist, the name conferred upon such as, agreeing with the Nominalists in regard to the purely subjective character (post rem) of the Universals, differed from these in ascribing to the mind the power of fashioning a Concept or notion correspondent to the general name.

In the 13th century, when Scholasticism reached its highest development, the supremacy of Aristotle was firmly established. We find accordingly in THOMAS AQUINAS (1226-74) a supporter of the Aristotelian doctrine of the Universals as immanent in re; but, at the same time, he declared that the intellect, by abstracting the essential attributes (quiddities) of things from their accidental attributes, forms Universals post rem; and, although he utterly rejected the Platonic assumption of ideas as real-the only truly real-entia, he yet maintained that the ideas or thoughts of things in the Divine mind, antecedent to creation, were Universalia ante rem.

His great rival in the next generation, DUNS Scorus (d. 1300), admitting the Universals in the same three-fold sense, determined the various related questions in a way peculiar to himself. Especially in regard to the question of the relation of the universal to the singular or individual, was he at war with his predecessors. Thomas had declared that in the individual, composed of form and matter (materia signata), the form was the Universal, or element common to all the individuals; what marked off one individual from another-the so-called principle of individuation—was the matter, e.g. in Sokrates, hæc caro, hæc ossa. But as matter bore the character of defect or imperfection, Scotus complained that this was to represent the individual as made imperfect in being individualized, whereas it was the ultima realitas, the most truly perfect form of Existence. The principle of individuation must be something positive, and not, like matter, negative. The quidditas, or universal, must be supplemented by a haecceitas to make it singular or individual; Sokrates was made individual by the addition of Sokratitas to his specific and generic characteristics as man and animal.

The next name is of the greatest importance. WILLIAM of OCKHAM (d. 1347), an Englishman and pupil of Duns Scotus, revived the nominalistic doctrine that had been so long discredited amongst the leading schoolmen and frowned upon by the Church. From him, if not earlier, is to be dated the period of the downfall of Scholasticism; severance beginning to be made of reason from faith, and philosophy being no longer prosecuted in the sole interest of theological dogma.

Universals (genera, species, and the like) were, he held, nothing real extra animam, but were only in mente. Calling everything that existed in or out of the mind a singular or individual, he asked how a term (terminus) like homo could be predicated of a number of individuals. The answers of every form of Realism, that of Duns Scotus included, led to absurdity; the Realists all began with the universal, and sought to explain from it the individual, whereas they ought to begin with the singular, which alone really exists, and ascend to the explanation of the universal. The true doctrine was that the universals were not at all in things, but in the mind; and in the proposition homo est risibilis, the term homo stood not for any universal man, but for the real individual man, who alone could laugh. As to the mode of existence of the universals in the mind, he contented himself with enumerating various opinions that were or might be held, without deciding for one in particular. But he was ever ready with the warning: Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem. Though he was not a nominalist pure and simple,-in refusing to regard the universals as mere words or names and nothing more-it would be committing him to more than he has committed himself to, if we should call him, with some, a Conceptualist.

From the time of William of Ockham, the nominalistic doctrine, in some shape or other, remained triumphant in the schools. Formerly suspected and condemned, and revived by a determined opponent of the papal see, it yet became so firmly established as a philosophical tenet, that it was accepted by the most orthodox theologians; and, in the last days of scholasticism, it was actually Realism that became the suspicious doctrine. In fact, with philosophy growing more and more independent, and entering upon discussions that had no reference to religious dogma, it became possible for the later schoolmen to be Nominalists in regard to the question of Universals, while they were at the same time devout believers in the region of faith. It was when the question thus became an open one, that Realism, as a theory of Universals, fell into discredit: as a tendency of the human mind, Realism remained active as before, and upon the extension of the field of philosophy at the beginning of the modern period, it occupied new strongholds, from which it has not yet been dislodged.

Since the age of Descartes, Nominalism or Conceptualism has been professed by the great majority of thinkers; but the question has been allowed to sink into the second rank. In its stead, the discussion of the Origin of Knowledge,—in or before experience,— has risen into importance. When it was regarded as philosophically settled that Universals had no subsistence apart from the mind, it was a natural transition to pass to the consideration of their origin. But here, as in the question of perception, there has, during the whole modern period, been too little disposition to turn to account the results of the long mediaval struggle. In the question of Innate Ideas the old question is directly involved.

HOBBES is one of the few in later times to whom the question

had lost none of its significance, and he is besides remarkable as perhaps the most outspoken representative of extreme Nominalism. His view cannot be better or more shortly given than in his own words: Of names, some are common to many things, as a man, a tree; others proper to one thing, as he that writ the Iliad, Homer, this man, that man. And a common name, being the name of many things severally taken, but not collectively of all together (as man is not the name of all mankind, but of every one, as of Peter, John, and the rest severally), is therefore called an universal name; and therefore this word universal is never the name of anything existent in nature, nor of any idea or phantasm formed in the mind, but always the name of some word or name; so that when a living creature, a stone, a spirit, or any other thing, is said to be universal, it is not to be understood that any man, stone, &c., ever was or can be universal, but only that these words, living creature, stone, &c., are universal names, that is, names common to many things; and the conceptions answering to them in our mind, are the images and phantasms of several living creatures or other things. And, therefore, for the understanding of the extent of an universal name, we need no other faculty but that of our imagination, by which we remember that such names bring sometimes one thing, sometimes another, into our mind.' (Hobbes, De Corpore, c. 2, § 10.)

LOCKE's view of Abstraction is contained in the Third Book of his Essay. In Chap. III., ' Of General Terms,' he asks (§ 6), how general words came to be made, seeing that all existing things are particular.' He replies, Words become general by being made the signs of general ideas; and Ideas become general, by separating from them the circumstances of Time and Place, and any other ideas that may determine them to this or that particular existence.' He goes on to say:- Children know nothing but particulars; at first they know, for example, a small number of persons; as their experience grows they become acquainted with a greater number, and discern their agreements; they then frame an idea to comprise these points of agreement, which is to them the meaning of the general term 'man;' they leave out of the Idea what is peculiar to Peter, James, and Mary, and retain what is common. The same process is repeated for still higher generalities, as 'animal.' A general is nothing but the power of representing so many particulars. Essences and Species are only other names for these abstract ideas. The sorting of things under names is the workmanship of the understanding, taking occasion from the similitude it observes among them, to make abstract general ideas; and to set them up in the mind as Patterns or Forms, to which they are found to agree. That the generalities are mere ideas, or mental products, and not real existences, is shown by the different composition of complex ideas in different minds; the idea of Covetousness in one man is not what it is in another.

Locke is thus substantially a Nominalist, but does not go deep into the psychological nature of general ideas. He remarks justly