PHFLOSOPHIC SCIENCES. 49 



in subtlety, boldness of thought, and especially in eloquence ; he carried all 

 his hearers with him ; uiid his system, which was but another form of 

 nominalism, was generally accepted in the schools, and received the name of 

 Conceptumalism, It consists in the argument that the universals are neither 

 realities, as asserted by the realists, nor mere words, as the nominalists would 

 have it, but conceptions of the intelligence, which, having observed the 

 resemblance that several individuals have to one another, resumes these 

 resemblances in a notion which it extends to all these individuals. There 

 exist only in nature individuals ; the only reality of general qualities them- 

 selves is in the individuals which possess them ; but, in presence of 

 individual objects, there is the thought which perceives their relations to one 

 another, which extracts from them what they have in common with each 

 other, and which thus engenders the notion of kind and species ; in a word, 

 the universals. 



If Abelard had confined hiniself to propounding this theory, he would 

 have, in all probability, escaped the censure of the Church and some of the 

 troubles of his after-life. But, like Roscelin, he claimed to apply his 

 philosophic doctrine to the interpretation of the mystery of the Trinity. Like 

 Roscelin, he failed, was condemned by two councils, and ended his days, 

 repentant and submissive, at the Abbey of Cluny. 



While Abelard was going astray in the paths of a perilous theology, 

 other masters who believed themselves to be wiser than he was, carried away 

 in their turn, struck upon the same shoal. One of them, Gilbert de la 

 Porree, was at first well received by the Church, for, notwithstanding the 

 boldness of his doctrine, he was raised to the bishopric of Poitiers. He had 

 been an ardent adversary of the opinions of the nominalists, but without 

 declaring himself openly for the realists. His realism consisted in supposing 

 that if " the generation of things began from the moment that the breath of 

 the Creator produced motion, the primordial forms have not, however, been 

 altered in their nature by the new act which produced the second forms ; 

 thus the primitive and real substances of the air, of fire, of water, of the 

 earth, of humanity, of corporeity, &c., have been, are, and ever will be in 

 themselves permanent, immovable, separate from the subaltern substances or 

 born forms, which communicate the essence to the sentient phenomena " 

 (Fig. 38). According to Gilbert, it is form which gives being. The 

 principle of the common essence that is to say, of the species or kind will 



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