TWO THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 45 



that he rather failed to appreciate fully the difficulty 

 which the Platonic doctrine was designed to meet 

 that, namely, of providing some sort of common 

 nexus or unifying principle by which the validity of 

 Knowledge could be maintained. For he had no 

 certain means of showing that the potent energy 

 of Nature was unitary and homogeneous. 



He is frequently described as a sensationalist, 

 but such a view is certainly incorrect. This, 

 however, may be admitted that he sought the 

 essentials of Reality not in the Mind but in the 

 Object. It may be fairly claimed that to this ex- 

 tent he occupied common ground with the sensa- 

 tionalists, in that he was an adherent of the tabula 

 rasa view of the Mind, expressed in the maxim : 



Nihil est in intellectu quod nonfuit in sensu. 



Plato and Aristotle may be taken as typical of 

 the two principal intellectual tendencies which 

 have characterised all subsequent speculation the 

 Platonist, he who finds in the constitution of the 

 Mind the eternal principles or at least the types of 

 the eternal principles of Reality ; the Aristotelian, 

 he for whom these seem to reside in the object and, 

 in the act of Cognition, are merely impressed upon, 

 transferred to, presented to, or otherwise introduced 

 into or apprehended by the Mind. 



