io THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC. 



these universals exist apart from the world revealed to our senses, and con 

 stitute what is in truth the only real world, the world revealed to our senses 

 being but a faint shadow of the real world (Platonic Realism). Other philo 

 sophers taught that the universals which we conceive intellectually have 

 their real being as such in the Divine Mind, and that our intellects have a 

 direct intuition of them there (Ontologistic Realism). Others again believed 

 that the universals exist actually as such in the individual things of the 

 world revealed to us through our senses ; that they are not multiplied numeri 

 cally in each individual thing, but that the one common essence (e.g. humanity} 

 is numerically the same in all individuals, these being, therefore, manifesta 

 tions apparently distinct of what is really one single reality (Empiric 

 Realism). This view would lead logically to what is known as Monism or 

 Pantheism in philosophy : the doctrine that all existing reality is one single 

 being : that all distinctions are only apparent, none real. 



Passing from exaggerated realism we find at the opposite extreme 

 the erroneous doctrine of NOMINALISM. According to this view not only 

 is the universal as such not a reality, but it is not even an idea ; it is a 

 mere name (hence the title, Nominalism}, a mere term. This term (e.g. 

 man] has nothing real corresponding to it except individuals (John, James, 

 Thomas) ; and it has nothing mental corresponding to it except our percep 

 tions of actual individuals or our imagination images (some definite, some 

 vague, composite, modified, confused) of individuals formerly perceived. The 

 universal would be simply a common name serving as a label or mark for 

 numerous more or less similar individuals ; but we are supposed to have no 

 concept or idea of that common element which exists in the similar things and 

 is the ground of their similarity. This is a modern doctrine, prevalent for 

 the last few centuries, especially in England from the days of Hobbes, Locke, 

 Hume, etc., and supported later by Bain and Mill. It is based on an 

 erroneous view of the nature of the human mind : the view, namely, that man 

 has no other faculties of knowledge than external and internal sense faculties, 

 that reason or intellect is a sense faculty which acts through a bodily organ, 

 that all our knowledge is reducible to sensations. This system is at variance 

 with an accurate interpretation of the facts of consciousness. It is impossible 

 to deny seriously that, besides sense percepts and imagination images, we 

 have also in our minds, corresponding to the universal terms of our language, 

 other representations not of a sensible, but of an intellectual order : notions, 

 concepts, ideas by which we interpret the individual things of sense experi 

 ence. 



Between the error of Nominalism which holds that Universals are mere 

 names, and Moderate Realism which teaches that they are mental representa 

 tions of extramental realities, comes another erroneous view known as CON- 

 CEPTUALISM, which teaches that Universals are mere concepts of the intellect, 

 mere mental constructions having no reality outside the mind to correspond 

 to them. This opinion was propounded by some mediaeval philosophers, 

 and in recent times under a new and more erroneous form by the German 

 philosopher, Kant (1724-1804), and his numerous followers. If universals 

 were mere concepts of the intellect they would not be validly applicable to the 

 things revealed to us through our senses ; and since it is by applying these 

 concepts to things that we interpret the latter and get all our knowledge 



