II PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 75 



whether some day certain "royal and ultimate 

 laws " may not come and " wreck " those laws 

 which are at present, it would appear, acting as 

 nature's police. It is evident, from these expres- 

 sions, that " laws," in the mind of the preacher, 

 are entities having an objective existence in a 

 graduated hierarchy. And it would appear that 

 the "royal laws " are by no means to be regarded 

 as constitutional royalties : at any moment, they 

 may, like Eastern despots, descend in wrath 

 among the middle- class and plebeian laws, which 

 have hitherto done the drudgery of the world's 

 work, and, to use phraseology not unknown in our 

 seats of learning " make hay " of their belong- 

 ings. Or perhaps a still more familiar analogy 

 has suggested this singular theory; and it is 

 thought that high laws may " suspend " low laws, 

 as a bishop may suspend a curate. 



Far be it from me to controvert these views, if 

 any one likes to hold them. All I wish to remark 

 is that such a conception of the nature of " laws " 

 has nothing to do with modern science. It. is 

 scholastic realism realism as intense and unmiti- 

 gated as that of Scotus Erigena a thousand years 

 ago. The essence of such realism is that it 

 maintains the objective existence of universals, 

 or, as we call them nowadays, general propositions.! 

 It affirms, for example, that " man " is a real 

 thing, apart from individual men, having its exist- 

 ence, not in the sensible, but in the intelligible 



