SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY 



tury for the Latin world. Until the fifteenth century, 

 and even later, nearly all learned men worried and 

 fought over these intangible riddles. 



The words genus and species were collective terms, 

 embracing all things of a like nature. Thus the 

 genus " Animal " embraced not individual animals, 

 but all animals. The species, man, horse, meant not 

 an individual man or horse, but all men, all 

 horses, etc. . 



Plato and Aristotle differed in their ultimate ideas 

 even more, than in their mode of expression. Plato 

 held that the Universals, the Genus and the Species 

 existed ideally, but nevertheless in reality, necessarily 

 before the substances, as principles of their genera- 

 tion, and enjoyed as such a proper and permanent 

 existence, whilst the individual (thing or substance) 

 submitted to the law of movement, or change, and 

 had nothing actual, fixed, or stable in itself; it was 

 only a mere appearance of its being. 



Aristotle, on the contrary, not holding existing 

 things in the contempt that Plato did, makes with 

 regard to the Genus, the Species and the Universals, 

 properly so called, the following explicit declaration : 

 " The man, the horse, all the Universals reside in the 

 individual. The substance is not some thing or a 

 part of the universal : it is a totality a compound 

 of such form and of such matter. No universal has 



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