Chapter XL: Appendix: I (1)

THE DOCTRINE OF UNIVERSALS.

The controversy respecting Universals first obtained its place in philosophy from the colloquies of Sokrates, and the writings and teachings of Plato. We need not here touch upon their predecessors, Parmenides and Herakleitus, who, in a confused and unsystematic manner, approached this question from opposite sides, and whose speculations worked much upon the mind of Plato in determining both his aggressive dialectic, and his constructive theories. Parmenides of Elea, improving upon the ruder conceptions of Xenophanes, was the first to give emphatic proclamation to the celebrated Eleatic doctrine, Absolute Ens as opposed to Relative Fientia: _i.e._ the Cogitable, which Parmenides conceived as the One and All of reality, [Greek: e(\n kai\ pa=n], enduring and unchangeable, of which the negative was unmeaning,--and the Sensible or Perceivable, which was in perpetual change, succession and multiplicity, without either unity, or reality, or endurance. To the last of these two departments Herakleitus assigned especial prominence. In place of the permanent underlying Ens, which he did not recognize, he substituted a cogitable process of _change_, or generalized concept of what was common to all the successive phases of change--a perpetual stream of generation and destruction, or implication of contraries, in which everything appeared only that it might disappear, without endurance or uniformity. In this doctrine of Herakleitus, the world of sense and particulars could not be the object either of certain knowledge or even of correct probable opinion; in that of Parmenides, it was recognized as an object of probable opinion, though not of certain knowledge. But in both doctrines, as well as in the theories of Demokritus, it was degraded, and presented as incapable of yielding satisfaction to the search of a philosophizing mind, which could find neither truth nor reality except in the world of Concepts and Cogitables.

Besides the two theories above-mentioned, there were current in the Hellenic world, before the maturity of Sokrates, several other veins of speculation about the Kosmos, totally divergent one from the other, and by that very divergence sometimes stimulating curiosity, sometimes discouraging all study as though the problems were hopeless. But Parmenides and Herakleitus, together with the arithmetical and geometrical hypotheses of the Pythagoreans, are expressly noticed by Aristotle as having specially contributed to form the philosophy of Plato.

Neither Parmenides, nor Herakleitus, nor the Pythagoreans were dialecticians. They gave out their own thoughts in their own way, with little or no regard to dissentients. They did not cultivate the art of argumentative attack or defence, nor the correct application and diversified confrontation of universal terms, which are the great instruments of that art. It was Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides, that first employed dialectic in support of his master's theory, or rather against the counter-theories of opponents. He showed by arguments memorable for their subtlety, that the hypothesis of an Absolute, composed of Entia Plura Discontinua, led to consequences even more absurd than those that opponents deduced from the Parmenidean hypothesis of Ens Unum Continuum. The dialectic, thus inaugurated by Zeno, reached still higher perfection in the colloquies of Sokrates; who not only employed a new method, but also introduced new topics of debate--ethical, political, and social matters instead of physical things and the Kosmos.

The peculiar originality of Sokrates is well known: a man who wrote nothing, but passed his life in indiscriminate colloquy with every one; who professed to have no knowledge himself, but interrogated others on matters that they talked about familiarly and professed to know well; whose colloquies generally ended by puzzling the respondents, and by proving to themselves that they neither knew nor could explain even matters that they had begun by affirming confidently as too clear to need explanation. Aristotle tells us[1] that Sokrates was the first that set himself expressly and methodically to scrutinize the definitions of general or universal terms, and to confront them, not merely with each other, but also, by a sort of inductive process, with many particular cases that were, or appeared to be, included under them. And both Xenophon and Plato give us abundant examples of the terms to which Sokrates applied his interrogatories: What is the Holy? What is the Unholy? What is the Beautiful or Honourable? What is the Ugly or Base? What is Justice--Injustice--Temperance--Madness--Courage--Cowardice--A City--A man fit for civil life? What is the Command of Men? What is the character fit for commanding men? Such are the specimens, furnished by a hearer,[2] of the universal terms whereon the interrogatories of Sokrates bore. All of them were terms spoken and heard familiarly by citizens in the market-place, as if each understood them perfectly; but when Sokrates, professing his own ignorance, put questions asking for solutions of difficulties that perplexed his own mind, the answers showed that these difficulties were equally insoluble by respondents, who had never thought of them before. The confident persuasion of knowledge, with which the colloquy began, stood exposed as a false persuasion without any basis of reality. Such illusory semblance of knowledge was proclaimed by Sokrates to be the chronic, though unconscious, intellectual condition of his contemporaries. How he undertook, as the mission of a long life, to expose it, is impressively set forth in the Platonic Apology.

[Footnote 1: Metaphysica, A. p. 987, b. 2; M. p. 1078, b. 18.]

[Footnote 2: Xenophon Memorab. I. i. 16; IV. vi. 1-13.]

It was thus by Sokrates that the meaning of universal terms and universal propositions, and the relation of each respectively to particular terms and particular propositions were first made a subject of express enquiry and analytical interrogation. His influence was powerful in imparting the same dialectical impulse to several companions; but most of all to Plato, who not only enlarged and amplified the range of Sokratic enquiry, but also brought the meaning of universal terms into something like system and theory, as a portion of the conditions of trustworthy science. Plato was the first to affirm the doctrine afterwards called Realism, as the fundamental postulate of all true and proved cognition. He affirmed it boldly, and in its most extended sense, though he also produces (according to his frequent practice) many powerful arguments and unsolved objections against it. It was he (to use the striking phrase of Milton[3]) that first imported into the schools the portent of Realism. The doctrine has been since opposed, confuted, curtailed, transformed, diversified in many ways; but it has maintained its place in logical speculation, and has remained, under one phraseology or another, the creed of various philosophers, from that time down to the present.

[Footnote 3: See the Latin verses 'De Ideâ Platonicâ quemadmodum
Aristoteles intellexit'--
"At tu, perenne ruris Academi decus,
Hæc monstra si tu primus induxti scholis," &c.]

The following account of the problems of Realism was handed down to the speculations of the mediæval philosophers by Porphyry (between 270-300 A.D.), in his Introduction to the treatise of Aristotle on the Categories. After informing Chrysaorius that he will prepare for him a concise statement of the doctrines of the old philosophers respecting Genus, Differentia, Species, Proprium, Accidens, "abstaining from the deeper enquiries, but giving suitable development to the more simple,"--Porphyry thus proceeds:--"For example, I shall decline discussing, in respect to Genera and Species, (1) Whether they have a substantive existence, or reside merely in naked mental conceptions; (2) Whether, assuming them to have substantive existence, they are bodies or incorporeals; (3) Whether their substantive existence is in and along with the objects of sense, or apart and separable. Upon this task I shall not enter, since it is of the greatest depth, and requires another larger investigation; but shall try at once to show you how the ancients (especially the Peripatetics), with a view to logical discourse, dealt with the topics now propounded."[4]

[Footnote 4: Porphyry, Introd. in Categor. init. p. 1, a. 1, Schol. Br.]

Before Porphyry, all these three problems had been largely debated, first by Plato, next by Aristotle against Plato, again by the Stoics against both, and lastly by Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists as conciliators of Plato with Aristotle. After Porphyry, problems the same, or similar, continued to stand in the foreground of speculation, until the authority of Aristotle became discredited at all points by the influences of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But in order to find the beginning of them, as questions provoking curiosity and opening dissentient points of view to inventive dialecticians, we must go back to the age and the dialogues of Plato.

The real Sokrates (_i.e._ as he is described by Xenophon) inculcated in his conversation steady reverence for the invisible, as apart from and overriding the phenomena of sensible experience; but he interpreted the term in a religious sense, as signifying the agency of the personal gods, employed to produce effects beneficial or injurious to mankind.[5] He also puts forth his dialectical acuteness to prepare consistent and tenable definitions of familiar general terms (of which instances have already been given), at least so far as to make others feel, for the first time, that they did not understand these terms, though they had been always talking like persons that _did_ understand. But the Platonic Sokrates (_i.e._ as spokesman in the dialogues of Plato) enlarges both these discussions materially. Plato recognizes, not simply the invisible persons or gods, but also a separate world of invisible, impersonal entities or objects; one of which he postulates as the objective reality, though only a cogitable reality, correlating with each general term. These Entia he considers to be not merely distinct realities, but the only true and knowable realities: they are eternal and unchangeable, manifested by the fact that particulars partake in them, and imparting a partial show of stability to the indeterminate flux of particulars: unless such separate Universal Entia be supposed, there is nothing whereon cognition can fasten, and consequently there can be no cognition at all.[6] These are the substantive, self-existent Ideas, or Forms that Plato first presented to the philosophical world; sometimes with logical acuteness, oftener still with rich poetical and imaginative colouring. They constitute the main body and characteristic of the hypothesis of Realism.

[Footnote 5: Xenophon, Memorab. I. iv. 9-17; IV. iii. 14.]

[Footnote 6: Aristot. Metaphys. A. vi. p. 987, b. 5; M. iv. p. 1078, b. 15.]

But, though the main hypothesis is the same, the accessories and manner of presentation differ materially among its different advocates. In these respects, indeed, Plato differs not only from others, but also from himself. Systematic teaching or exposition is not his purpose, nor does he ever give opinions in his own name. We have from him an aggregate of detached dialogues, in many of which this same hypothesis is brought under discussion, but in each dialogue, the spokesmen approach it from a different side; while in others (distinguished by various critics as the Sokratic dialogues) it does not come under discussion at all, Plato being content to remain upon the Sokratic platform, and to debate the meaning of general terms without postulating in correlation with them an objective reality, apart from their respective particulars.

At the close of the Platonic dialogue called Kratylus, Sokrates is introduced as presenting the hypothesis of self-existent, eternal, unchangeable Ideas (exactly in the way that Aristotle ascribes to Plato) as the counter-proposition to the theory of universal flux and change announced by Herakleitus. Particulars are ever changing (it is here argued) and are thus out of the reach of cognition; but, unless the Universal Ideas above them, such as the Self-beautiful, the Self-good, &c., be admitted as unchangeable, objective realities, there can be nothing either nameable or knowable: cognition becomes impossible.

In the Timæus, Plato describes the construction of the Kosmos by a Divine Architect, and the model followed by the latter in his work. The distinction is here again brought out, and announced as capital, between the permanent, unalterable Entia, and the transient, ever-fluctuating Fientia, which come and go, but never really _are_. Entia are apprehended by the cogitant or intelligent soul of the Kosmos, Fientia by the sentient or percipient soul; the cosmical soul as a whole, in order to suffice for both these tasks, is made up of diverse component elements--Idem, correlating with the first of the two, Diversum, correlating with the second, and Idem implicated with Diversum, corresponding to both in conjunction. The Divine Architect is described as constructing a Kosmos, composed both of soul and body, upon the pattern of the grand pre-existent Idea--[Greek: au)tozô=|on] or the Self-Animal; which included in itself as a genus the four distinct species--celestial (gods, visible and invisible), terrestrial, aerial, and aquatic.

The main point that Plato here insists upon is--the eternal and unchangeable reality of the cogitable objects called Ideas, prior both in time and in logical order to the transient objects of sight and touch, and serving as an exemplar to which these latter are made to approximate imperfectly. He assumes such priority, without proof, in the case of the Idea of Animal; but, when he touches upon the four elements--Fire, Air, Water, Earth--he hesitates to make the same assumption, and thinks himself required to give a reason for it. The reason that he assigns (announced distinctly as his own) is as follows: If Intellection (Cogitation, [Greek: Nou=s]) and true Opinion are two genera distinct from each other, there must clearly exist Forms or Ideas imperceptible to our senses, and apprehended only by cogitation or intellection; but if, as some persons think, true opinion is noway different from intellection, then we must admit all the objects perceived by our senses as firm realities. Now the fact is (he proceeds to say) that true opinion is not identical with intellection, but quite distinct, separate, and unlike to it. Intellection is communicated by teaching, through true reasoning, and is unshakeable by persuasion; true opinion is communicated by persuasion and removed by counter-persuasion, without true reasoning. True opinion may belong to any man; but intellection is the privilege only of gods and of a small section of mankind. Accordingly, since the two are distinct, the objects correlating with each of them must also be distinct from each other. There must exist, first, primary, eternal, unchangeable Forms, apprehended by intellect or cogitation, but imperceptible by sense; and, secondly, resemblances of these bearing the same name, generated and destroyed each in some place, and apprehended first by sense, afterwards by opinion. Thirdly, there must be the place wherein such resemblances are generated; a place itself imperceptible by sense, yet postulated, as a receptacle indispensable for them, by a dreamy kind of computation.

We see here that the proof given by Plato, in support of the existence of Forms as the primary realities, is essentially psychological: resting upon the fact that there is a distinct mental energy or faculty called Intellection (apart from Sense and Opinion), which must have its distinct objective correlate; and upon the farther fact, that intellection is the high prerogative of the gods, shared only by a few chosen men. This last point of the case is more largely and emphatically brought out in the Phædrus, where Sokrates delivers a highly poetical effusion respecting the partial intercommunion of the human soul with these eternal intellectual realities. To contemplate them is the constant privilege of the gods; to do so is also the aspiration of the immortal soul of man generally, in the pre-existent state, prior to incorporation with the human body; though only in a few cases is such aspiration realized. Even those few human souls, that have succeeded in getting sight of the intellectual Ideas (essences without colour, figure, or tactile properties), lose all recollection of them when first entering into partnership with a human body; but are enabled gradually to recall them, by combining repeated impressions and experience of their resemblances in the world of sense. The revival of these divine elements is an inspiration of the nature of madness; though it is a variety of madness as much better than uninspired human reason as other varieties are worse. The soul, becoming insensible to ordinary pursuits, contracts a passionate devotion to these Universal Ideas, and to that dialectical communion, especially with some pregnant youthful mind, that brings them into clear separate contemplation disengaged from the limits and confusion of sense.

Here philosophy is presented as the special inspiration of a few, whose souls during the period of pre-existence have sufficiently caught sight of the Universal Ideas or Essences; so that these last, though overlaid and buried when the soul is first plunged in a body, are yet revivable afterwards under favourable circumstances, through their imperfect copies in the world of sense; especially by the sight of personal beauty in an ingenuous and aspiring youth, in which case the visible copy makes nearest approach to the perfection of the Universal Idea or Type. At the same time, Plato again presents to us the Cogitable Universals as the only objects of true cognition, the Sensible Particulars being objects merely of opinion.

In the Phædon, Sokrates advances the same doctrine, that the **perceptions of sense are full of error and confusion, and can at best suggest nothing higher than opinion; that true cogitation can never be attained except when the cogitant mind disengages itself from the body and comes into direct contemplation of the Universal Entia, objects eternal and always the same--The Self-beautiful, Self-good, Self-just, Self-great, Healthy, Strong, &c., all which objects are invisible, and can be apprehended only by the cogitation or intellect. It is this Cogitable Universal that is alone real; Sensible Particulars are not real, nor lasting, nor trustworthy. None but a few philosophers, however, can attain to such pure mental energy during this life; nor even they fully and perfectly. But they will attain it fully after death (their souls being immortal), if their lives have been passed in sober philosophical training. And their souls enjoyed it before birth during the period of pre-existence; having acquired, before junction with the body, the knowledge of these Universals, which are forgotten during childhood, but recalled in the way of Reminiscence, by sensible perceptions that make a distant approach to them. Thus, according to the Phædon and some other dialogues, all learning is merely reminiscence; the mind is brought back, by the laws of association, to the knowledge of Universal Realities that it had possessed in its state of pre-existence. Particulars of sense participate in these Universals to a certain extent, or resemble them imperfectly; and they are therefore called by the same name.

In the Republic, we have a repetition and copious illustration of this antithesis between the world of Universals or Cogitables, which are the only unchangeable realities and the only objects of knowledge,--and the world of Sensible Particulars, which are transitory and confused shadows of these Universals, and are objects of opinion only. Full and real Ens is knowable, Non-Ens is altogether unknowable; what is midway between the two is matter of opinion, and in such midway are the Particulars of sense.[7] Respecting these last, no truth is attainable: whenever you affirm a proposition respecting any of them, you may with equal truth affirm the contrary at the same time. Nowhere is the contrast between the Universals or real Ideas (among which the Idea of Good is the highest, predominant over all the rest), and the unreal Particulars, or Percepta, of Sense, more forcibly insisted upon than in the Republic. Even the celestial bodies and their movements, being among these Percepta of sense, are ranked among phantoms interesting but useless to observe; they are the best of all Percepta, but they fall very short of the perfection that the mental eye contemplates in the Ideal--in the true Figures and Numbers, in the real Velocity and the real Slowness. In the simile commencing the seventh book of the Republic, Plato compares mankind to prisoners in a cave, chained in one particular attitude, so as to behold only an ever-varying multiplicity of shadows, projected, through the opening of the cave upon the wall before them, by certain unseen realities behind. The philosopher is one among a few, who by training or inspiration, have been enabled to face about from this original attitude, and to contemplate with his mind the real unchangeable Universals, instead of having his eye fixed upon their particular manifestations, at once shadowy and transient. By such mental revolution he comes round from the Perceivable to the Cogitable, from Opinion to Knowledge.

[Footnote 7: Plato, Republic. v. pp. 477, 478.]

The distinction between these two is farther argued in the elaborate dialogue called Theætetus, where Sokrates, trying to explain what Knowledge or Cognition is, refutes three proposed explanations and shows, to his own satisfaction, that it is not sensible perception, that it is not true opinion, that it is not true opinion coupled with rational explanation. But he confesses himself unable to show what Knowledge or Cognition is, though he continues to announce it as correlating with Realities Cogitable and Universal only.[8]

[Footnote 8: Plato, Theætêt. pp. 173, 176, 186. Grote's Plato, II. xxvi. pp. **320-395.]

In the passages above noticed, and in many others besides, we find Plato drawing a capital distinction between Universals eternal and unchangeable (each of them a Unit as well as a Universal),[9] which he affirms to be the only real Entia,--and Particulars transient and variable, which are not Entia at all, but are always coming or going; the Universals being objects of cogitation and of a psychological fact called Cognition, which he declares to be infallible; and the Particulars being objects of Sense, and of another psychological fact radically different, called Opinion, which he pronounces to be fallible and misleading. Plato holds, moreover, that the Particulars, though generically distinct and separate from the Universals, have nevertheless a certain communion or participation with them, by virtue of which they become half existent and half cognizable, but never attain to full reality or cognizability.

[Footnote 9: Plato, Philêbus, p. 15, A. B.; Republic, x. p. 596, A. The phrase of Milton, "unus et universus," expresses this idea; also the lines:--

"Sed quamlibet natura sit communior,
Tamen seorsus extat ad modum unius," &c.]

This is the first statement of the theory of complete and unqualified Realism, which came to be known in the Middle Ages under the phrase _Universalia ante rem_ or _extra rem_, and to be distinguished from the two counter-theories _Universalia in re_ (Aristotelian), and _Universalia post rem_ (Nominalism). Indeed, the Platonic theory goes even farther than the phrase _Universalia ante rem_, which recognizes the particular as a reality, though posterior and derivative; for Plato attenuates it into phantom and shadow. The problem was now clearly set out in philosophy--What are the objects correlating with Universal terms, and with Particular terms? What is the relation between the two? Plato first gave to the world the solution called Realism, which lasted so long after his time. We shall presently find Aristotle taking issue with him on both the affirmations included in his theory.

But though Plato first introduced this theory into philosophy, he was neither blind to the objections against it, nor disposed to conceal them. His mind was at once poetically constructive and dialectically destructive; to both these impulses the theory furnished ample scope, while the form of his compositions (separate dialogues, with no mention of his own name) rendered it easy to give expression either to one or to the other. Before Aristotle arose to take issue with him, we shall find him taking issue with himself, especially in the dialogues called Sophistes and Parmenides, not to mention the Philêbus, wherein he breaks down the unity even of his sovereign Idea, which in the Republic governs the Cogitable World,--the Idea of Good.[10]

[Footnote 10: Plato, Philêbus, pp. 65, 66. See Grote's Plato, II. xxx. pp. 584, 585.]

Both in the Sophistes and in the Parmenides, the leading disputant introduced by Plato is not Sokrates, but Parmenides and another person (unnamed) of the Eleatic school. In both dialogues objections are taken against the Realistic theory elsewhere propounded by Plato, though the objections adduced in the one are quite distinct from those noticed in the other. In the Sophistes, the Eleatic reasoner impugns successfully the theories of two classes of philosophers, one the opposite of the other: first, the Materialists, who recognized no Entia except the Percepta of Sense; next, the Realistic Idealists, who refused to recognize these last as real Entia, or as anything more than transient and mutable Generata or Fientia, while they confined the title of Entia to the Forms, cogitable, incorporeal, eternal, immutable, neither acting on anything, nor acted upon by anything. These persons are called in the Sophistes "Friends of Forms," and their theory is exactly what we have already cited out of so many other dialogues of Plato, drawing the marked line of separation between Entia and Fientia; between the Immutable, which alone is real and cognizable, and the Mutable, neither real nor cognizable. The Eleate in the Sophistes controverts this Platonic theory, and maintains that among the Universal Entia there are included items mutable as well as immutable; that both are real and both cognizable; that Non-Ens (instead of being set in glaring contrast with Ens, as the totally incogitable against the infallibly cognizable)[11] is one among the multiplicity of Real Forms, meaning only what is different from Ens, and therefore cognizable not less than Ens; that Percepta and Cogitata are alike real, yet both only relatively real, correlating with minds percipient and cogitant. Thus, the reasoning in the Sophistes, while it sets aside the doctrine of _Universalia ante rem_, does not mark out any other relation between Universals and Particulars (neither _in re_ nor _post rem_). It discusses chiefly the intercommunion or reciprocal exclusion of Universals with respect to each other; and upon this point, far from representing them as objects of infallible Cognition as contrasted with Opinion, it enrolls both Opinion and Discourse among the Universals themselves, and declares both of them to be readily combinable with Non-Ens and Falsehood. So that we have here error and fallibility recognized in the region of Universals, as well as in that of Particulars.

[Footnote 11: Plato, Republic, v. pp. 478, 479.]

But it is principally in the dialogue Parmenides that Plato discusses with dialectical acuteness the relation of Universals to their Particulars; putting aside the intercommunion (affirmed in the Sophistes) or reciprocal exclusion between one Universal and another, as an hypothesis at least supremely difficult to vindicate, if at all admissible.[12] In the dialogue, Sokrates is introduced in the unusual character of a youthful and ardent aspirant in philosophy, defending the Platonic theory of Ideas as we have seen it proclaimed in the Republic and in the Timæus. The veteran Parmenides appears as the opponent to cross-examine him; and not only impugns the theory by several interrogatories which Sokrates cannot answer, but also intimates that there remain behind other objections equally serious requiring answer. Yet at the same time he declares that, unless the theory be admitted, and unless _Universalia ante rem_ can be sustained as existent, there is no trustworthy cognition attainable, nor any end to be served by philosophical debate. Moreover, Parmenides warns Sokrates that, before he can acquire a mental condition competent to defend the theory, he must go through numerous preliminary dialectical exercises; following out both the affirmative and the negative hypotheses in respect to a great variety of Universals severally. To illustrate the course prescribed, Parmenides gives a long specimen of this dialectic in handling his own doctrine of Ens Unum. He takes first the hypothesis _Si Unum est_, next the hypothesis _Si Unum non est_; and he deduces from each, by ingenious subtleties, double and contradictory conclusions. These he sums up at the end, challenging Sokrates to solve the puzzles before affirming his thesis.

[Footnote 12: Plato, Parmenid. p. 129, E.; with Stallbaum's Prolegomena to that dialogue, pp. 38-42.]

Apart from these antinomies at the close of the dialogue, the cross-examination of Sokrates by Parmenides, in the middle of it, brings out forcibly against the Realistic theory objections such as those urged against it by the Nominalists of the Middle Ages. In the first place, we find that Plato conceived the theory itself differently from Porphyry and the philosophers that wrote subsequently to the Peripatetic criticism. Porphyry and his successors put the question, Whether Genera and Species had a separate existence, apart from the Individuals composing them? Now, the world of Forms (the Cogitable or Ideal world as opposed to the Sensible) is not here conceived by Plato as peopled in the first instance by Genera and Species. Its first tenants are _Attributes_, and attributes distinctly _relative_--Likeness, One and Many, Justice, Beauty, Goodness, &c. Sokrates, being asked by Parmenides whether he admits Forms corresponding with these names, answers unhesitatingly in the affirmative. He is next asked whether he admits forms corresponding to the names Man, Fire, Water, &c., and, instead of replying in the affirmative, intimates that he does not feel sure. Lastly, the question is put whether there are Forms corresponding to the names of mean objects--Mud, Hair, Dirt, &c. At first he answers emphatically in the negative, and treats the affirmative as preposterous; there exist no cogitable Hair, &c., but only the object of sense that we so denominate. Yet, on second thoughts, he is not without misgiving that there may be Forms even of these; though the supposition is so repulsive to him that he shakes it off as much as he can. Upon this last expression of sentiment Parmenides comments, ascribing it to the juvenility of Sokrates, and intimating that, when Sokrates has become more deeply imbued with philosophy, he will cease to set aside any of these objects as unworthy.

Here we see that, in the theory of Realism as conceived by Sokrates, the Self-Existent Universals are not Genera and Species as such, but Attributes--not Second Substances or Essences, but Accidents or Attributes, _e.g._ Quality, Quantity, Relation, &c., to use the language afterwards introduced in the Aristotelian Categories; that no Genera or Species are admitted except with hesitation; and that the mean and undignified among them are scarcely admissible at all. This sentiment of dignity, associated with the _Universalia ante rem_, and emotional necessity for tracing back particulars to an august and respected origin, is to be noted as a marked and lasting feature of the Realistic creed; and it even passed on to the _Universalia in re_, as afterwards affirmed by Aristotle. Parmenides here takes exception to it (and so does Plato elsewhere[13]) as inconsistent with faithful adherence to scientific analogy.

[Footnote 13: Plato, Sophist. p. 227, A. Politikus, p. 266, D.]

Parmenides then proceeds (interrogating Sokrates) first to state what the Realistic theory is (Universals apart from Particulars--Particulars apart from Universals, yet having some participation in them, and named after them), next to bring out the difficulties attaching to it. The Universal or Form (he argues) cannot be entire in each of its many separate particulars; nor yet is it divisible, so that a part can be in one particular, and a part in another. For take the Forms Great, Equal, Small; Equal magnitudes are equal because they partake in the Form of Equality. But how can a part of the Form Equality, less than the whole Form, cause the magnitudes to be equal? How can the Form Smallness have any parts less than itself, or how can it be greater than anything?

The Form cannot be divided, nor can it co-exist undivided in each separate particular; accordingly, particulars can have no participation in it at all.

Again, you assume a Form of Greatness, because you see many particular objects, each of which appears to you great; this being the point of resemblance between them. But if you compare the Form of Greatness with any or all of the particular great objects, you will perceive a resemblance between them; this will require you to assume a higher Form, and so on upward without limit.

Sokrates, thus embarrassed, starts the hypothesis that perhaps each of these Forms may be a cogitation, and nothing more, existing only within the mind. How? rejoins Parmenides. Can there be a cogitation of nothing at all? Must not each cogitation have a real _cogitatum_ correlating with it,--in this case, the one Form that is identical throughout many particulars? If you say that particulars partake in the Form, and that each Form is nothing but a cogitation, does not this imply that each particular is itself cogitant?

Again Sokrates urges that the Forms are constant, unalterable, stationary in nature; that particulars resemble them, and participate in them only so far as to resemble them. But (rejoins Parmenides), if particulars resemble the Form, the Form must resemble them; accordingly, you must admit another and higher Form, as the point of resemblance between the Form and its particulars; and so on, upwards.

And farther (continues Parmenides), even when admitting these Universal Forms as self-existent, how can we know anything about them? Forms can correlate only with Forms, Particulars only with Particulars. Thus, if I, an individual man, am master, I correlate with another individual man, who is my servant, and he on his side with me. But the Form of mastership, the Universal self-existent Master, must correlate with the Form of servantship, the Universal Servant. The correlation does not subsist between members of the two different worlds, but between different members of the same world respectively. Thus the Form of Cognition correlates with the Form of Truth; and the Form of each variety of Cognition, with the Form of the corresponding variety of Truth. But we, as individual subjects, do not possess in ourselves the Form of Cognition; our cognition is our own, correlating with such truth as belongs to it and to ourselves. Our cognition cannot reach to the Form of Truth, nor therefore to any other Form; we can know nothing of the Self-good, Self-beautiful, Self-just, &c., even supposing such Forms to exist.

These acute and subtle arguments are nowhere answered by Plato. They remain as unsolved difficulties, embarrassing the Realistic theory; they are reinforced by farther difficulties no less grave, included in the dialectical antinomies of Parmenides at the close of the dialogue, and by an unknown number of others indicated as producible, though not actually produced. Yet still Plato, with full consciousness of these difficulties, asserts unequivocally that, unless the Realistic theory can be sustained, philosophical research is fruitless, and truth cannot be reached. We see thus that the author of the theory has also left on record some of the most forcible arguments against it. It appears from Aristotle (though we do not learn the fact from the Platonic dialogues), that Plato, in his later years, symbolized the Ideas or Forms under the denomination of Ideal Numbers, generated by implication of The One with what he called The Great and Little, or the Indeterminate Dyad. This last, however, is not the programme wherein the Realistic theory stands opposed to Nominalism.

But the dialogue Parmenides, though full of acuteness on the negative side, not only furnishes no counter-theory, but asserts continued allegiance to the Realistic theory, which passes as Plato's doctrine to his successors. To impugn, forcibly and even unanswerably, a theory at once so sweeping and so little fortified by positive reasons, was what many dialecticians of the age could do. But to do this, and at the same time to construct a counter-theory, was a task requiring higher powers of mind. One, however, of Plato's disciples and successors was found adequate to the task--Aristotle.

The Realistic Ontology of Plato is founded (as Aristotle himself remarks) upon mistrust and contempt of perception of sense, as bearing entirely on the flux of particulars, which never stand still so as to become objects of knowledge. All reality, and all cognoscibility, were supposed to reside in the separate world of Cogitable Universals (_extra rem_ or _ante rem_), of which, in some confused manner, particulars were supposed to partake. The Universal, apart from its particulars, was clearly and fully knowable, furnishing propositions constantly and infallibly true: the Universal as manifested in its particulars was never fully knowable, nor could ever become the subject of propositions, except such as were sometimes true and sometimes false.

Against this separation of the Universal from its Particulars, Aristotle entered a strong protest; as well as against the subsidiary hypothesis of a participation of the latter in the former; which participation, when the two had been declared separate, appeared to him not only untenable and uncertified, but unintelligible. His arguments are interesting, as being among the earliest objections known to us against Realism.

1. Realism is a useless multiplication of existences, serving no purpose. Wherever a number of particulars--be they substances, eternal or perishable, or be they qualities, or relations--bear the same name, and thus have a Universal _in re_ predicable of them in common, in every such case Plato assumes a Universal _extra rem_, or a separate self-existent Form; which explains nothing, and merely doubles the total to be summed up.[14]

[Footnote 14: Aristot. Metaph. A. ix. p. 990, a. 34; M. iv. p. 1079, a. 2. Here we have the first appearance of the argument that William of Ockham, the Nominalist, put in the foreground of his case against Realism: "Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem."]

2. Plato's arguments in support of Realism are either inconclusive, or prove too much. Wherever there is cognition (he argues), there must exist an eternal and unchangeable object of cognition, apart from particulars, which are changeable and perishable. No, replies Aristotle: cognition does not require the _Universale extra rem_; for the _Universale in re_, the constant predicate of all the particulars, is sufficient as an object of cognition. Moreover, if the argument were admitted, it would prove that there existed separate Forms or Universals of mere negations; for many of the constant predicates are altogether negative. Again, if Self-existent Universals are to be assumed corresponding to all our cogitations, we must assume Universals of extinct particulars, and even of fictitious particulars, such as hippocentaurs or chimeras; for of these, too, we have phantasms or concepts in our minds.[15]

[Footnote 15: Aristot. Metaphys. A. ix. p. 990, b. 14; Scholia, p. 565, b. 9, Br.]

3. The most subtle disputants on this matter include Relata, among the Universal Ideas or Forms. This is absurd, because these do not constitute any Genus by themselves. These disputants have also urged against the Realistic theory that powerful and unsolved objection, entitled "The Third Man."[16]

[Footnote 16: Aristot. Metaph. A. ix. p. 990, b. 15: [Greek: oi( a)kribe/steroi tô=n lo/gôn]. Both the points here noticed appear in the Parmenides of Plato.

The objection called "The Third Man" is expressed by saying that, if there be a Form of man, resembling individual men, you must farther postulate some higher Form, marking the point of resemblance between the two; and so on higher, without end.

The authenticity of the Platonic Parmenides is disputed by Ueberweg (Untersuchungen über die Echtheit und Zeitfolge der Platonischen Schriften, pp. 176-181), upon the ground (among others) that, while Aristotle never cites the dialogue by its title, nor ever makes probable allusion to it, the Parmenides advances against the theory of the Platonic Ideas this objection of Aristotle's, known under the name of "The Third Man." Aristotle (says Ueberweg), if he had known the Parmenides, would not have advanced this objection as his own. We must therefore suppose that the Parmenides was composed later than Aristotle, and borrowed this objection from Aristotle.

In reply to this argument I transcribe the passage of Aristotle (Metaphys. A. ix. p. 990, b. 15) to which Ueberweg himself refers: [Greek: e)/ti de\ oi( a)kribe/steroi tô=n lo/gôn oi( me\n tô=n pro/s ti poiou=sin i)de/as, ô(=n ou)/ phamen ei)=nai kath' au(to\ ge/nos, oi( de\ to\n tri/ton a)/nthrôpon le/gousin.] The same words (with the exception of [Greek: phasi/n] in place of [Greek: phame/n]) are repeated in M. p. 1079, a. 11.

Now these words plainly indicate that Aristotle does not profess to advance the objection, called [Greek: o( tri/tos a)/nthrôpos], as his own, or as broached by himself. He derives it from what he calls [Greek: oi( a)kribe/steroi tô=n lo/gôn]. The charge against Aristotle, therefore, of advancing as his own an objection which had already been suggested by Plato himself in the Parmenides, is unfounded. And it is the more unfounded, because Aristotle, in the first book of the Metaphysica, speaks in the language of a Platonist, and considers himself as partly responsible for the doctrine of Ideas: [Greek: dei/knumen, phame/n, oi)o/metha], &c. (Alexand. in Schol. p. 563, b. 27, Brand.)

But what are we to understand by these words--[Greek: oi( a)kribe/steroi tô=n lo/gôn]--from which Aristotle derives the objection? The words refer to certain expositions or arguments (oral, or written, or both) which were within the knowledge of Aristotle, and were of a peculiarly subtle and analytical character. Among them is very probably included the Platonic Parmenides itself, distinguished as it is for extreme subtlety. (See Stallbaum's Prolegg. pp. 249, 277, 337, who says, "In uno ferè Parmenide idearum doctrina subtilius investigatur.") I see no reason why it should not be included within the fair and reasonable meaning of the words. And such being the case, I cannot go along with Ueberweg (and other critics) who say that Aristotle has not even made an indirect allusion to the Parmenides.

But why did not Aristotle specify the Parmenides directly and by name? I do not know what was his reason. We may feel surprise (as Stallbaum feels, p. 337) that he does not; but, when critics infer from the omission that he did not know the dialogue as a work of Plato, I contest the inference. We see that Alexander, in his elaborate commentary (p. 566, Schol. Brand.) makes no allusion to the Parmenides, though he alludes to Eudêmus, to Diodôrus, Kronus, and to the manner in which the objection called [Greek: o( tri/tos a)/nthrôpos] was handled by various Sophists. Now we are fully assured that the Parmenides was acknowledged as a work of Plato, long before the time of Alexander (since it is included in the catalogue of Thrasyllus); yet he, the most instructed of all the commentators, makes no allusion to it. Why he did not, I cannot say, but his omission affords no ground for concluding that he did not know it, or did not trust its authenticity.]

4. The supporters of these Self-existent Universals trace them to two _principia_--The One, and the Indeterminate Dyad; which they affirm to be prior in existence even to the Universals themselves. But this cannot be granted; for the Idea of Number must be logically prior to the Idea of the Dyad; but the Idea of Number is relative, and the Relative can never be prior to the Absolute or Self-existent.

5. If we grant that, wherever there is one constant predicate belonging to many particulars, or wherever there is stable and trustworthy cognition, in all such cases a Self-existent Universal Correlate _extra rem_ is to be assumed, we shall find that this applies not merely to Substances or Essences, but also to the other Categories--Quality, Quantity, Relation, &c. But hereby we exclude the possibility of participation in them by Particulars; since from such participation the Particular derives its Substance or Essence alone, not its accidental predicates. Thus the Self-existent Universal Dyad is eternal: but a particular pair, which derives its essential property of doubleness from partaking in this Universal Dyad, does not at the same time partake of eternity, unless by accident. Accordingly, there are no Universal Ideas, except of Substances or Essences: the common name, when applied to the world of sense and to that of cogitation, signifies the same thing--Substance or Essence. It is unmeaning to talk of anything else as signified--any other predicate common to many. Well then, if the Form of the Universals and the Form of those Particulars that participate in the Universals be the same, we shall have something common to both the one and the other, so that the objection called "The Third Man" will become applicable, and a higher Form must be postulated. But, if the Form of the Universals and the Form of the participating Particulars, be not identical, then the same name, as signifying both, will be used equivocally; just as if you applied the same denomination man to Kallias and to a piece of wood, without any common property to warrant it.

6. But the greatest difficulty of all is to understand how these Cogitable Universals, not being causes of any change or movement, contribute in any way to the objects of sense, either to the eternal or to the perishable; or how they assist us towards the knowledge thereof, being not in them, and therefore not their substance or essence; or how they stand in any real relation to their participants, being not immanent therein. Particulars certainly do not proceed from these Universals, in any intelligible sense. To say that the Universals are archetypes, and that Particulars partake in them, is unmeaning, and mere poetic metaphor. For where is the working force to mould them in conformity with the Universals? Any one thing may _be_ like, or may _become_ like, to any other particular thing, by accident, or without any regular antecedent cause to produce such assimilation. The same particular substance, moreover, will have not one universal archetype only, but several. Thus, the same individual man will have not only the Self-animal and the Self-biped, but also the Self-man, as archetype. Then again, there will be universal archetypes, not merely for particular sensible objects, but also for Universals themselves; thus the genus will be an archetype for its various species; so that the same which is now archetype will, under other circumstances, be copy.

7. Furthermore, it seems impossible that what is Substance or Essence can be separate from that whereof it is the substance or essence. How then can the Universals, if they be the essences of sensible things, have any existence apart from those sensible things? Plato tells us in the Phædon, that the Forms or Universals are the causes why particulars both exist at all, and come into such or such modes of existence. But even if we assume Universals as existing, still the Particulars participant therein will not come into being, unless there be some efficient cause to produce movement; moreover, many other things come into being, though there be no Universals correlating therewith, _e.g._ a house, or a ring. The same causes that were sufficient to bring these last into being, will be sufficient to bring all particulars into being, without assuming any Universals _extra rem_ at all.

8. Again, if the Universals or Forms are Numbers, how can they ever be causes? Even if we suppose Particulars to be Numbers also, how can one set of Numbers be causes to the others? There can be no such causal influence, even if one set be eternal, and the other perishable.[17]

[Footnote 17: Aristot. Metaph. A. p. 991, b. 13. Several other objections are made by Aristotle against that variety of the Platonic theory wherein the Ideas were commuted into Ideal Numbers. These objections do not belong to the controversy of Realism against Nominalism.]

Out of the many objections raised by Aristotle against Plato, we have selected such as bear principally upon the theory of Realism; that is, upon the theory of _Universalia ante rem_ or _extra rem_--self-existent, archetypal, cogitable substances, in which Particulars faintly participate. The objections are not superior in acuteness, and they are decidedly inferior, in clearness of enunciation, to those that Plato himself produces in the Parmenides. Moreover, several of them are founded upon Aristotle's point of view, and would have failed to convince Plato. The great merit of Aristotle is, that he went beyond the negative of the Parmenides, asserted this new point of view of his own, and formulated it into a counter-theory. He rejected altogether the separate and exclusive reality which Plato had claimed for his Absolutes of the cogitable world, as well as the derivative and unreal semblance that alone Plato accorded to the sensible world. Without denying the distinction of the two, as conceivable and nameable, he maintained that truth and cognition required that they should be looked at in implication with each other. And he went even a step farther, in antithesis to Plato, by reversing the order of the two. Instead of considering the Cogitable Universals alone as real and complete in themselves, and the Sensible Particulars as degenerate and confused semblances of them, he placed complete reality in the Sensible Particulars alone,[18] and treated the Cogitable Universals as contributory appendages thereto; some being essential, others non-essential, but all of them relative, and none of them independent integers. His philosophy was a complete revolution as compared with Parmenides and Plato; a revolution, too, the more calculated to last, because he embodied it in an elaborate and original theory of Logic, Metaphysics, and Ontology. He was the first philosopher that, besides recognizing the equivocal character of those general terms whereon speculative debate chiefly turns, endeavoured methodically to set out and compare the different meanings of each term, and their relations to each other.

[Footnote 18: Aristotle takes pains to vindicate against both Plato and the Herakleiteans the dignity of the Sensible World. They that depreciate sensible objects as perpetually changing, unstable, and unknowable, make the mistake (he observes) of confining their attention to the sublunary interior of the Kosmos, where, indeed, generation and destruction largely prevail. But this is only a small portion of the entire Kosmos. In the largest portion--the visible, celestial, superlunary regions--there is no generation or destruction at all, nothing but permanence and uniformity. In appreciating the sensible world (Aristotle says) philosophers ought to pardon the shortcomings of the smaller portion on account of the excellences of the larger; and not condemn both together on account of the smaller (Metaphys. [Greek: G]. v. p. 1010, a. 30).]

However much the Ontology of Aristotle may fail to satisfy modern exigencies, still, as compared with the Platonic Realism, it was a considerable improvement. Instead of adopting Ens as a self-explaining term, contrasted with the Generated and Perishable (the doctrine of Plato in the Republic, Phædon, and Timæus), he discriminates several distinct meanings of Ens; a discrimination not always usefully pursued, but tending in the main towards a better theory. The distinction between Ens potential, and Ens actual, does not belong directly to the question between Realism and Nominalism, yet it is a portion of that philosophical revolution wrought by Aristotle against Plato--displacement of the seat of reality, and transfer of it from the Cogitable Universal to the Sensible Particular. The direct enunciation of this change is contained in his distinction of Ens into Fundamental and Concomitant ([Greek: sumbebêko/s]), and his still greater refinement on the same principle by enumerating the ten varieties of Ens called Categories or Predicaments.[19] He will not allow Ens (nor Unum) to be a genus, partible into species: he recognizes it only as a word of many analogous meanings, one of them principal and fundamental, the rest derivative and subordinate thereto, each in its own manner. Aristotle thus establishes a graduated scale of Entia, each having its own value and position, and its own mode of connexion with the common centre. That common centre Aristotle declared to be of necessity some individual object--Hoc Aliquid, That Man, This Horse, &c. This was the common subject, to which all the other Entia belonged as predicates, and without which none of them had any reality. We here fall into the language of Logic, the first theory of which we owe to Aristotle. His ontological classification was adapted to that theory.

[Footnote 19: In enumerating the Ten Categories, Aristotle takes his departure from the Proposition--_Homo currit_--_Homo vincit_. He assumes a particular individual as subject; and he distributes, under ten general heads, all the information that can be asked or given about that subject--all the predicates that can be affirmed or denied thereof. [See Ch. iii., especially p. 73, seq.]]

As we are here concerned only with the different ways of conceiving the relation between the Particular and the Universal, we are not called on to criticize the well-known decuple enumeration of Categories or Predicaments given by Aristotle, both in his treatise called by that name and elsewhere. For our purpose it is enough to point out that the particular sensible Hoc Aliquid is declared to be the ultimate subject, to which all Universals attach, as determinants or accompaniments; and that, if this condition be wanting, the unattached Universal cannot rank among complete Entia. The subject or First Substance, which can never become a predicate, is established as the indispensable ultimate subject for all predicates; if that disappears, all predicates disappear along with it. The Particular thus becomes the keystone of the arch whereon all Universals rest. Aristotle is indeed careful to point out a gradation in these predicates: some are essential to the subject, and thus approach so near to the First Substance that he calls them Second Substances; others, and the most in number, are not thus essential; these last are Concomitants or Accidents, and some of them fall so much short of complete Entity that he describes them as near to Non-Entia.[20] But all of them, essential or unessential, are alike constituents or appendages of the First Substance or Particular Subject, and have no reality in any other character.

[Footnote 20: Aristot. Metaph. E. p. 1026, b. 21: [Greek: phai/netas ga/r to/ sumbebêko\s e)ggu/s ti tou= mê\ o)/ntos].

There cannot be a stronger illustration of the difference between the Platonic and the Aristotelian point of view, than the fact that Plato applies the same designation to all particular objects of sense--that they are only midway between Entia and Non-Entia (Republic, v. pp. 478-479).]