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of the human mind as subjective conceptions. 

 For Ockham, says Haur^au, an idea was but a 

 modality of the thinking subject. Abstractions 

 then for these thinkers were but mental machinery 

 for analysis of the concrete. Aristotle was as 

 obscure and inconsistent in his language herein, 

 and often elsewhere, as he was profound and scru- 

 pulous ; but when his works came to be studied as 

 a whole, and in the original tongue, the influence 

 of his method, rather than the close consistency 

 of his language, told against realism : virtually he 

 was a conceptualist, and he found reality, where 

 Plato denied it, in the particular object of sense 1 . 



1 Thus it was difficult to claim his authority for one side 

 or the other. The metaphysical treatises were not known till 

 the later part of the twelfth century. (See p. 75, note 2.) At 

 the outset of the Physics Aristotle discusses what nature is in 

 itself, and defines first elements ; in the Second Analytics on 

 the other hand, although thinking of science as deductive and 

 expository, he strongly opposes the primary existence of 

 ideas, though these are predicable of many individuals. By 

 excess of logical formations, the division of properties, the use 

 of such terms as "ylvr) viroKeifieva" &c. &c., he laid himself 

 open to misconception, and so was readily platonised by his 

 commentators. It would seem indeed that for Aristotle uni- 

 versals were not merely propositions obtained by negation of 

 individual variations, but something more active. A VOTJO-IS 

 became somehow a TTOI'TJO-IS; e.g. "T) drjuiovpyijo-acra (frvo-is" 

 His position may be appreciated briefly thus : In the Cate- 

 gories Aristotle speaks of individuals as primarily existent, 



A. 3 



