what men tro, that is, opine or conjecture. Thus it was that Hobbes also made political and religious right to depend upon the absolute will of the personal sovereign, and all in due conformity with the Nominalist principle. But Locke was far too wise to run his tenets into this absurdity. He temporized or trimmed, as we saw Leibnitz do, and even Occam, and thereby verged to the middle ground, which the Scotch call their Conceptualism.

Moreover, in fact, Locke's Nominalist purity appears quite palpable. His "ideas" are no conceptions of essence or relation, but mere formations of the mind, and, as he calls them, "nominal essences"-a single phrase, whose incongruity avows the absurdity of the doctrine. Again, Locke says in terms: "It is plain that general and universal belong not to the real existence of things, but are the inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it for its own use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas."* Thus the ideas, with Locke, are also, like the words, but signs-not ascending to the dignity of conceptions; and due economy in the manufacture of both. And this is universally still the spirit of the race, with the practical reserve of what the English call their common sense. No doubt, a providential check upon their personal idiosyncracy.

In fine, the Conceptualism thus remains for the Celts. The mask established for this doctrine was to have the essence for its object; not the sign as with Nominalism nor the substance as with Realism. But this was just the so called heresy of Berengarius of Tours, who was the first to declare himself a follower of Erigena. He placed the real presence of Christ in the sacrament, not with the Realists in the substance, as the morsel of wafer, nor with the Nominalists in the name given it, but effectually in the essence. "If you rave with Lafranc" (says he), "that the flesh and blood of Christ exist to sense (sensaliter) upon the altar, you evidently set a snare for yourself; for he who thus affirms

*Book iii., ch. 6.

their sensible presence, and denies at the same time that they can be seized by sense, must contend both against his own proposition and the conception of all who are not destitute of understanding." Here was also a sample of the tactic, as above explained, to be employed by the Conceptualist race against the extreme doctrines. The writer's own view of the eucharist is stated in the following terms:

"Panem et vinum altaris post consecrationem esse corpus et sanguis Christi, quantum ad spiritualitatem vel rem sacramentum."

The rem was very possibly a purposed ambiguity, as consorting with the orthodox and Realistic notion; but more likely it was inability to designate the essence-the Latin idiom could never even naturalize this abstract term; and Berenger was stil! amid its second barbarism. It is accordingly recorded that he used indiscriminately the expressions res, substantia, and essentia; or, as its English version, thing, is said of matters abstract as well as physical. If he could but have explained that his meaning was the essence, and that essence is (pre-eminently in the Deity) the true reality, there could have been no valid objection to this use of rem, as it would signify the end or operation of the sacrament. Virgil does not mean by the phrase restituit rem, that Fabius restored the Roman republic, but its end or essence. It is what Scotus does himself in speaking of the sacrament— intellectualiter mente, non dente, comedimus-we partake of it conceptually, or by mind, not by mouth. The Calvinists call it well enough the "symbolic presence."

So, again, with even Roscellinus, the so-called founder of the Nominalists, he was really a Conceptualist in the polemical disguise. It would be more correct to style him the subverter of Nominalism. A writer of the day describes him as non auctor sed autor; not the author or founder of the doctrine, but the augmentor, that is, really the aggravator, the reducer to absurdity. And this he reached confessedly in the famous præter vocis flatus.

In this misapplied synthesis of the Breton, Roscellinus, he became, of course, heretical, by the touchstone of the

Trinity. But he did so by applying, unconsciously perhaps, to the prevailing doctrine his own Conceptualist principle, which brings all theses to the test of consequence. He was forced, it is known, to declare the equally monstrous heresy of the existence of three "essences" in the Deity. But how compelled, if he were a Nominalist, since the persons would be then but names, and the heresy would devolve to the præter vocis flatus? Compelled, therefore, because the principle which he relied on was not names but essences. But, moreover, the materials of this subject in general, whether furnished by contemporary chroniclers or modern critics, must be largely unreliable, as uncontrolled by science or system.

So, again, with the Celtic adversary of Roscellinus, William de Champeaux, the likewise preposterously supposed "founder of Realism." For Realism had been flourishing in mere discussion for ages previously, and he only systematized it by the new doctrine of Conceptualism. It was accordingly in this application that he came in conflict with Roscellinus, through the medium of a third and common principle, the essence, and which he too had from Scotus, though he called it substance, with Rome herself. This is manifest from his habitual illustration of the "parts and whole," as being inseparable mutually, which is the property of an essence; whereas, the substance and its parts are indefinitely separable. Gold, for instance, is as really gold in the smallest particle as in a mountain; while every atom that is detached from the mass must leave it less in substance.

It is the same with the common pupil of those famous rivals, Abelard, who came to combat both his teachers from a riper view of the Celtic principle. Yet he, too, continues still in England to be ranked a Nominalist; and has, per contra, by his French countrymen been recently erected into, not merely a Conceptualist, but even the founder of that supreme survey. In this, however, they do him too much honor, as will soon appear. His general ability is also overrated. He owes his fame, perhaps, as much to his "calamities" as to his capacities; and above both and all to having a

"great nation behind him." He fell, in short, into an Arianism almost as gross as the Gothic; and which is, perhaps, what the English critics have taken for his Nominalism.

The next and greatest of the originative successors of Scotus was his compatriot and namesake, the famous Subtle Doctor. In his case the Conceptualism becomes palpable and even precise. Acquinas and the Realists persisted to the last in 'the Greek dualism of matter and form as the respective principles of generals and particulars. Albertus, as above intimated, went to transpose this succession. He taught, like a true Nominalist, that it was the matter which particularizes while the form is "substantial," whence the vulgar illusion about his being a Realist, and the confusion in several others of the two doctrines interchangeably. When extremes could thus be jumbled, how look for rectitude in their gradations!

The oscillations from both those sides were put an end to by Duns Scotus, who interposed his celebrated system of Formalism between the matter and the form, which he termed Quiddity and Hacciety; a nomenclature which is still laughed at by shoals of even the learned, whose stock of mind united has failed to fathom its shallowest depths. They have not yet come to distinguish the Formalities of Scotus from the Forms of Aristotle-formalitates from forma. See how Bacon, like an ingrained Nominalist, in his quasi-new philosophy, insists (and properly enough), upon the value of the Forms, but never once alludes to the Formalities. Yet the things were as distinct and opposite as the great planes of space and time, as shown by etas, superadded to the one name to form the other. Scotus, too, was then more recent, and among his popular titles was that of Master of FormalitiesMagister Formalitatum; as the Italian, Peter Lombard was styled Magister Sententiarum; and the doctors of Nominalism might be dubbed Magistri Quodlibetarum. For their favorite form of composition they called Quodlibetæ; as this "what-you-will" mode of writing is still the style of their newspaper literature. It was but normal, then, that even Bacon should take no notice of Scotus, and should ignore in speculation the plane of Time, which is Conceptualism.

The ensuing organ of the doctrine in progressive lineage was Descartes. We find a succinct sample in his famous Cogito, ergo sum, or demonstration of existence synthetically through conception; and in which he also manifestly was a follower of Erigena. In him, however, the succession may well have been unconscious, or only organical, unlike Bacon toward the other Scotus; but that it was a fact will be reduced to demonstration. And the occasion will supply a practically famous summary of the three doctrines.

The formula of Descartes alluded to related avowedly to the celebrated demonstration of the being of God, by Anselm; for Anselm was a Roman saint and an English bishop, whereas Scotus Erigena was far enough from being either. Anselm was also the type and champion of Realism. His quasi-demonstration was accordingly this: "God is the greatest of all things imaginable; but this notion of itself must imply existence, as any thing supposed to contain it would be greater. But this would be a contradiction. Therefore, God exists." What must be the condition of the science of logic and of its votaries, when such a jumble of assumptions could have travelled down to us as demonstration! The only point of any force in the doubtless pious reverie (for he tells us naively that he groped for it, through even his dreams), is the simple allusion to the line of contradiction; which, besides, could demonstrate but indirectly and negatively, or ad absurdum.

Decartes accordingly resumed the argument with large improvement or elaboration; but was as yet unable to maintain it against Gassendi. He needed the counter preparation of Nominalism to set against the Realism, and gauge his way up to Conceptualism. This was furnished soon after him. by Kant, who refuted St. Anselm, like both a heretic and Nominalist, by pointing out that existence could be no accession, because no attribute; so that the conclusion was a begging of the question. This was true, although proved in the way of obscurum per obscurius. And, long before, Duns Scotus might have prompted the French philosopher.

In fact, Scotus and his followers maintained constantly