474 PSYCHO LOG T. 



ness than has been given on pp. 249-266. But that is ao 

 reason for denying its presence.* 



But the nominalists and traditional conceptualists find 

 matter for an inveterate quarrel in these simple facts. Full 

 of their notion that an idea, feeling, or state of conscious- 

 ness can at bottom only be aware of its own quality ; and 

 agreeing, as they both do, that such an idea or state of con- 

 sciousness is a perfectly determinate, singular, and tran- 

 sitory thing ; they find it impossible to conceive how it 

 should become the vehicle of a knowledge of anything 

 permanent or universal. " To know a universal, it must 

 be universal ; for like can only be known by like," etc. 

 Unable to reconcile these incompatibles, the knower and 

 the known, each side immolates one of them to save the 

 other. The nominalists ' settle the hash' of the thing known 

 by denying it to be ever a genuine universal ; the conceptual- 

 ists desi^atch the knower by denying it to be a state of 

 mind, in the sense of being a perishing segment of thoughts' 

 stream, consubstantial with other facts of sensibility. They 

 invent, instead of it, as the vehicle of the knowledge of 

 universals, an actus purus intellect us, or an Ego, whose func- 

 tion is treated as quasi-miraculous and nothing if not aAve- 

 inspiring, and which it is a sort of blasphemy to aj)proach 

 with the intent to explain and make common, or reduce to 

 lower terms. Invoked in the first instance as a vehicle for 

 the knowledge of universals, the higher principle presently 

 is made the indisj^ensable vehicle of all thinking whatever, 

 for, it is contended, " a universal element is present in 

 every thought." The nominalists meanwhile, who dislike 



*Mr. F. H. Bradley sa3's the conception or tlie 'meaning' "consists 

 of a part of the content, cut off, fixed by the mind, and considered apart 

 from the existence of the sign. It would not be correct to add, and re- 

 ferred away to another real subject ■ for where we think without judging, 

 and where we deny, that description would not be applicable.' This 

 seems to be the same doctrine as ours; the application to one or to all sut)- 

 jectsof the abstract fact conceived (i.e. its individuality or its universality), 

 constituting a new conception. I am, however, not quite sure that j\Ir. 

 Bradley steadily maintains this ground. Cf. the first chapter of his 

 Principles of Logic. The doctrine I defend is stoutly upheld in Rosmini's 

 Philosophical System, Introduction by Thomas Davidson, p. 43 (London, 

 1882). 



