INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 73 



individual and realizes the universal idea of that being 

 in its own way. Every human being is a man, but 

 never the same man. My own individual human na- 

 ture is not identical with the individual human nature 

 of anybody else. But we do want to say that every 

 finite essence can be deprived of its individuality by ab- 

 straction; that by this process we attain a universal idea, 

 the so-called metaphysical essence of the Scholastics, 

 which is one and the same, and can be predi- 

 cated of every individual being belonging to that 

 class. l< The physical is not the same, but perfectly 

 alike in all; the metaphysical essence is nothing else 

 than the physical essence inadequately conceived by 

 us. ' ' Nor is this universal idea a mere fiction of the 

 mind. It is based on the perfect likeness of individ- 

 uals of the same essence. In forming it, our mind 

 does not produce but presupposes this perfect likeness 

 as something entirely independent of all intellectual 

 activity. 



For all men, no matter what their stature, color, 

 and so forth may be, are true men and have what we 

 call a "human nature"; and all triangles possess, as a 

 matter of fact and independently of the mind that 

 which makes them triangles. The only thing that 

 the intellect produces is the iiniversality as such. For 

 the intellect has the power of perfect abstraction. It 

 is capable of omitting all differences between the objects 

 under consideration, including that property which 

 makes every object individual, and of conceiving or 

 retaining merely what is truly common to all of them. 



What, therefore, is the true nature of the univer- 

 sal idea and the common phantasm? 



