THE PATH OF EVOLUTION 



which furnished the subsistent in each compound; 

 but form gave the life or the existent. In this view 

 "form " was the vis creatrix, being the IDEA, without 

 which real existence was not. " Before the thing or 

 substance the pure, simple idea thereof existed, in 

 which idea nothing ever alters, nothing ever changes. 

 The substance or the things are, however, the alliance 

 of matter with representative forms, which are to the 

 ideas as more or less imperfect copies are to their 

 models, but which are never permanent in their con- 

 dition, since they belong to another class of beings.* 

 These views regarding the form and idea, held con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, still lie at the basis of much 

 of the metaphysical thought of the present day. 



Among the Schoolmen for more than six centuries 

 the main subjects that occupied their minds and their 

 pens were the questions that grew out of these theo- 

 ries. What were the natures and the relations to each 

 other of the Universals, of the Genus, of the Species and 

 of the Individuals f These were the questions pro- 

 pounded in the third century by Porphyry in his 

 introduction to the Categories of Aristotle, and trans- 

 lated by Boethius in the beginning of the sixth cen- 



* Avant les chosen sent les idees, pure, simple dont rien ne s'altere, 

 dont rien ne se change jamais. Dont les choses sont les copies plus 

 ou moins imparfait de ces idees, qui ne demeurant jamais dans le 

 meme etat, appartiennent a une autre serie d'etres. 



Philosophic Scho., T. 1., P. 69. Compare also Plato's Phsedo, Sec. 

 62, et seq. H. Gary's Trans. 



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