64 PHILOSOPHIC SCIENCES. 



Dominicans did not give up the contest, and St. Thomas had many fervent 

 and eloquent successors. " In order to avoid being accused of betraying 

 their cause," says M. Haureau, " all Franciscans were obliged to declare 

 against St. Thomas, and all Dominicans against Duns Scotus. The few 

 exceptions were denounced as schismatics. Thus, for instance, Pierre 

 (PAuriol, surnamed in the University of Paris the Eloquent Doctor, was, 

 although a Franciscan, one of the nominalists. A dialectician of the first 

 rank, he attacked without mercy psychological realism in St. Thomas, 

 and did not spare the natural species, the image-ideas of his school. This 

 fierce controversy, which indirectly attacked the dpctrine of Duns Scotus, 

 caused great excitement in the ranks of the realists, most of whom belonged 

 to the Order of Franciscans. Upon the other hand, the secession of Durand 

 de St. Pourcain, called the Very Resolute Doctor, who, while professing 

 philosophy, forgot that he was a Dominican and upheld the doctrines of 

 Duns Scotus, was a gain to the Franciscans. M. Haureau says, " From this 

 epoch, the 'fact of belonging to one particular order in religion ceased to 

 imply implicit obedience to any one philosophical sect ; the ties of discipline 

 were loosened, and though the two schools still existed, each individual took 

 up the position which seemed best in his own eyes." 



It was" from England, once more, that came the next celebrity of scholas- 

 ticism. William of Ockham, born in the town from which he took his 

 name, was a pupil of Duns Scotus, and proved worthy of his great master, 

 After having passed his youth with the Dominican Friars at Guildford, he 

 repaired to Paris, where he found more scope for expounding his doctrine of 

 nominalism. At first he had upheld the realist doctrines of his master, 

 but the force of logic drove him into the opposite camp. His system is best 

 described in the words of M. Haureau, who says that William of Ockham, 

 by an analysis of the faculty of knowledge, saw that it was seconded by the 

 intuitive, which we call perception, and by the abstractive, which we call 

 abstraction. With these two energies correspond the simple ideas which 

 the view of tangible objects affords us, and the compound ideas which 

 the intelligence forms by comparison, by abstraction. William of Ockham 

 further demonstrated that the realists, having misapprehended human intelli- 

 gence in its manner of being and its manner of action, had fallen into a pro- 

 found error in their definition of Divine Intelligence. God is the name of the 

 mystery ; everybody can see and judge his works ; nobody can appreciate 



