40 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 



to follow Locke, but to follow any one, whoever he 

 may be. 



Mr. Romanes tells us that he passes "on to consider 

 the only distinction which can be properly drawn 

 between human and brute psychology. . . . The dis- 

 tinction has been clearly enunciated, from Aristotle 



if we can perceive the general nature of certain words and classes 

 of words, why not of other entities also? (4) We can perceive 

 similitudes between certain objects, therefore we can perceive the 

 universal, for every similitude perceived, reveals our power of 

 perception of the same quality, or essential lineament, in distinct 

 individuals, i.e. an universal. (5) The Nominalists admitted that 

 we have collective ideas ; but collective ideas presuppose the per- 

 ception of the universal, without which no '^number" and no 

 " aggregate of individuals " could be recognized as such. (6) Again, 

 it was said. Nominalism destroys all certainty, for if nothing 

 objective corresponded to our terms, we could know nothing but 

 subjective modifications, and this would destroy the validity of 

 the law of contradiction. If the term and idea " being" represents 

 nothing objective, the whole system of truth disappears. (7) It 

 was also objected that Nominalism was fatal to all science, which 

 necessarily treats of order and laws arising from certain common 

 properties, or similar essential characteristics, perceived to exist in 

 individuals. Science, even physical, is primarily concerned with 

 what is abstract and universal, and has always to fall back upon it 

 in the ultimate analysis ; but if the universal has no objective reality, 

 science becomes a mere lusiis mentis — a contemplation of a mental 

 panorama of worthless, because truthless, figments. (8) Nominalists 

 were also taxed with confusing the objects of cognition with 

 the means of cognition ; objects being known directly through (by 

 means of) our mental aff"ections, and not mediately., as results of 

 mental affections which are themselves primarily cognized — a 

 position from which, of course. Idealism follows, such as that from 

 Berkeley and Hume, through Kant and Fichte, to our last living 

 representatives thereof. By such arguments the Schoolmen com- 

 pletely extinguished the Nominalists, who tried by endless quibbles 

 to avoid being forced into that Idealistic Scepticism which reduces 

 science to a knowledge of distinct, individual modifications in a 

 state of chaotic disorder, since it affirms no real objective relations 

 of interdependence, or of any other kind. 



