held out the promise of a future life; how far the skeptics were right in declaiming against the senses; how animals, according to Descartes, are automata, and yet how they have souls and feeling, according to the opinion of the vulgar; how we can rationally explain the doctrine of those, like Cardan, Campanella, Henry More, and others, who give life and perception to all things; how the laws of nature, many of which were unknown before this system pointed them out, derive their origin from higher principles than those of matter, although every change in matter takes place mechanically Finally, it is only since I have meditated upon this system that I understand how it is, that the endowment of brute animals with souls does not impair our trust in the immortality of the soul of man, but rather confirms and strengthens it, by leading us to see that all souls are imperishable."

CHAPTER VIII.

REALISM, NOMINALISM, AND CONCEPTUALISM.

As a preparation for the study of Kant and the later German philosophy, it will be convenient to point out more fully than has yet been done the distinctive functions of the Understanding and the Sense. The Imagination, also, regarded as the faculty which mediates between the Understanding and the Sense, needs to be carefully considered, in order to determine its precise boundaries and the limitations of its use. Perhaps these ends can best be obtained indirectly, while we are reviewing at some length one of those old questions, the discussion of which so often recurs at different epochs in the world's history.

One of the most remarkable controversies which have ever agitated the schools of speculative theology, and which also occupies a large place in the history of Philosophy, is that which was waged over the abstruse, and, as many would now consider it, the fantastical and absurd, question between the Realists, the Nominalists, and the Conceptualists. I do not agree with those who speak lightly, of it, and regard it only as one curious chapter in the history of the follies and aberrations of the human intellect. That cannot be a merely frivolous or meaningless dispute, which the mind of man inevitably stumbles upon at every stage of its inquiries both in abstract speculation and physical science; which is debated in our own day with as keen an interest between Mill and Hamilton, between Agassiz and Darwin, as it was, over two thousand years ago, between the followers of Plato, Zeno, and Aristotle, or in mediæval times, between St. Bernard and Abelard, between Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas; which agitated alike the universities, the Church, and the politics of Europe; which was waged not only with the pen and the bloodless weapons of diplomacy, but with the club and the sword; and which is now just as far from a final settlement as ever.

In successive ages, it is true, the question has come up under different aspects, and theories have been formed in relation to it

for widely dissimilar purposes. Yet at bottom it is always one and the same subject, the discussion of which must affect any theory that we may form respecting the nature of human knowledge. It may be stated in terms so technical and abstruse, that it shall seem to concern only the subtle and profitless distinctions of an obsolete Scholastic philosophy; or it may be so phrased that every botanist and zoologist, and even every chemist, of the present time, will recognize it as the topic toward which his thoughts are most frequently turned when he is occupied with the latest and farthest advanced researches and speculations of his favorite science. The limits of the present undertaking will allow only a hurried glance round the outskirts of the subject.

- as this It

What is it which is before the mind, what is it towards which our attention is directed, and about which our thoughts are occupied, when we use General Terms; that is, when we are either speaking or thinking, not about this or that individual object or event, but about whole classes of things? It is easy enough to tell what we are thinking about, if this be some one thing, having a definite and clearly perceived aspect to our senses, man, that tree, the one triangle delineated on the blackboard. is an idea or mental picture of this one thing, either as it is now presented to sense, or represented in the imagination. Both perception and imagination deal only with individuals, as presented or portrayed with the distinct attributes which belong to this one, and to no other; since no two individuals perfectly resemble each other. A picture, whether on canvas or in the "mind's eye," which is imagination, must be of this one (say) man or horse; — perhaps an imaginary one, Hercules or Bucephalus ; but still one and not many - - an individual and not a class. Now, all the objects around us in nature, without exception, are individual objects, each having a character and attributes of its own; and at least two great powers of the mind, as I have said, perception and imagination, are concerned solely with these particular things. But all the words of a language are General Terms, the names of classes, genera and species. What are we thinking about, then, what is before the mind, when we use words?

mere sounds,'

Nothing but words, answers the Nominalist; which are conventional or arbitrary signs, and which have no meaning or significance, except as they suggest other words, or, when we wish to be more definite, as they call up in imagination a picture of some one individual belonging to the class of which that word is an arbitrary sign.

Not so, eagerly responds the Realist; the word is a name for the archetype or pattern, after which the whole class of things which it denotes was formed; for the Idea of that class, which was in the mind of God before he made the world, and which is therefore a part of the plan of creation. The word, moreover, signifies the essence of the class, or its inmost nature; and individual objects belong each to its own class only through participating in that common nature, or sharing that Idea. An individual - John or William — is "man," because he has the characteristic and essential attribute of man, because he partakes of the humanity which belongs to his whole class, which makes man to be man, and which, therefore, must have been in the mind of the Creator when he formed men as a class or genus entirely distinct from all other creatures which he has made. In like manner, "virtue," or "holiness," is neither a proper name of some one individual action, nor a mere abstract name, flatus vocis, articulate sound without sense; but it is common to the whole class of virtuous or holy actions, and is that by participating in which any act becomes holy. “Virtue” is not a mere name; it is a reality. The distinction between "virtue " and "vice" is not merely nominal, but real. When Scripture commands you to "do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God," it does not utter mere words, but enjoins something positive and real, something which God approved from all eternity, before any act was done whereby this command was executed. To deny this is to deny that there are any essential distinctions between different classes of actions and things; to deny that genera and species are really constituted in the nature of things, or are anything more than fabrications for man's convenience, their names being applied, not indeed at random, but yet arbitrarily and by convention, through common consent, and so liable to be changed when greater convenience may require. Realism asserts that there was a plan of creation, and that there is a moral law and a natural law, according to which individual things and acts are divided into real classes, and set over against each other by inherent and essential distinctions, so that these are good and those evil, these are men and those brutes, this is life and that is death. With this view of the matter, I think we can understand how Realism came to be a substantive and earnest belief, and men became fanatics in support of it, judging their opponents to be infidels and atheists.

Then come the Conceptualists, and say to Nominalist and Realist, 66 you are both wrong, and the truth, as usual, lies about

half way between the two extreme opinions." Universals—abstract general ideas are something more than mere words, and something less than real substantive entities, having a distinct and independent existence. They are abstract general ideas. The question concerns the nature and powers. of the human mind, and relates to the different classes of ideas which are presented to it, or which it is able to form. Our cognitive faculties are not limited to the senses and the imagination; if they were, then indeed our knowledge would be confined to particulars, and not only should we be incapable of rising to Universals to General Ideas, but we should not even have names for such ideas. Words, which are general names, could never have been invented, and we should be incapable of language, like the brutes. Besides the senses and the imagination, which take note only of particulars, and which dogs and cats possess equally well, sometimes better, than men, we have intellect the Understanding proper the faculty of pure Thought; and the special function of this faculty is to form general ideas. And the process of so doing can be easily and quickly analyzed. The office of the Understanding is to compare particulars with each other, thereby to discern relations between them, and so to generalize, through becoming aware that one or more of such relations exist not only between the two particulars that were first compared, but are common to a crowd of others, to so many particulars, that, for convenience, we put them into a class by themselves. Then we give a name to that class, which is, of course, a general name, or word; and we think the general idea, or universal, denoted by that word, when we think the common relation which exists between all the members of that class, namely, the relation of similarity in some of their attributes. The relations between things are not perceptible by sense, which takes cognizance of the things alone; neither can they be pictured by the imagination, for they have neither shape nor color; but they are discerned by the intellect. I know not how "virtue" looks. I cannot draw "goodness" on the blackboard. But what of that? I know what these words mean. I have, not a picture, but a definite concept, of them in my mind, formed by grasping together their attributes, and apprehending the relations which they bear to certain individual acts.

After this brief view of their leading characteristics, we are prepared to follow understandingly the conflict of the three theories in the history of Philosophy. Of course, there are modifications and subdivisions of each of these schools; there are moderate