468 Additional Notes, 



neral terms, and which the mind contemplates in employing 

 such terms. - Thus, when the general term vegetable is used, . 

 they contend that the mind contemplates some substance of 

 a very refined nature, or a general form, having a positive 

 existence. This substance or form, according to them, does 

 not belong to any particular genus or species of vegetables 

 exclusively, but is a phantasm, made up of every thing that 

 is common to different genera or species. It is about this 

 form or general essence that the mind is employed while con- 

 sidering vegetable in the abstract. Both the Platonists and 

 the Aristotelians were Realists, though differing among 

 themselves with regard to some details. 



The Nominalists, on the other hand, contended that there 

 are no existences in nature corresponding to general terms, 

 and that the objects of our attention, in all our general spe- 

 culations, are not essences, forms, or ideas, but words. Thus 

 they suppose that, in the instance above selected, the word 

 vegetable is the proper object of thought. This word, hav- 

 ing been adopted as the representative of certain ideas col- 

 lected from several genera and species, is used, in a manner, 

 analogous to an algebraic character, which we employ through- 

 out a process, without attending to the quantity which it re- 

 presents. This was the doctrine of Zeno, of the Stoics, of 

 Roscelinus, in the eleventh century, and of his successor, 

 Abelard. 



The Conceptualists dissent from both' of the above-stated 

 opinions. They suppose that words are connected, by com- 

 mon consent, with certain attributes common to a number of 

 genera and species, and abstracted from all peculiarities. By 

 the law of the association of ideas, when the word vegetable 

 is pronounced, all these attributes are drawn out of the ca- 

 binet of memory, and arranged, by the faculty of conception, 

 before the mind. This collection of ideas they suppose to be 

 the object about which the mind is exercised. We lose sight 

 of the word, and instantly attend to these conceptions. 



Metaphysical Improvements of the eighteenth Century. 



From a review of the whole of this chapter, it appears that 

 the principal improvements which have been made in meta- 

 physical science, during the last age, may be summarily pre- 

 sented in the following particulars. 



1. The Inductive Method of inquiry has been introduced 



