Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/224

 question of nationality was hotly debated in the seventeenth century (see as cited in the text, and also his Historia Ecclesiastica (1627, Bann. Club), p. 227; Tractatus de Joannis Scoti Vita et Patria, by (John Colgan), Antwerp, 1655; Apologia pro Scoto Anglo, by  (N. Mason), 1656; Scotus Hiberniæ Restitutus, by  (John Ponce), Paris, 1660). A tradition that Duns was buried alive was also the subject of controversy in the seventeenth century (see, Apologia pro Johanne Duns Scoto adversus Abr. Bzovium; the reply of entitled Animadversiones et Scholia in Apologiam nuper editam de Vita et Morte Duns Scoti; and the rejoinder of MacCaghwell entitled Apologia Apologiæ pro Johanne Duns Scoto scriptæ adversus Nicholaum Janssenium, Paris, 1623).

Among mediæval thinkers Duns is distinguished not only by breadth and depth of learning—he was familiar with the logical treatises of Porphyry and Boetius, and the works of the great Arabian and Jewish schoolmen, such as Averroes and Avicebron, not to speak of christian writers—but by originality and acuteness of intellect. His hitherto undoubted works embrace grammar, logic, metaphysics, and theology. The treatise on grammar is remarkable as the first attempt to treat the subject philosophically, i.e. to investigate the universal laws of articulate speech without exclusive reference to any particular language. Werner (Scholastik des späteren Mittelalters, 6) regards it as a development of one of Roger Bacon's ideas. Its title, ‘De Modis Significandi sive Grammatica Speculativa,’ is suggestive of the large scope of the work. The logical treatises of Duns took the shape of ‘Quæstiones’ suggested by the ‘Isagoge’ of Porphyry and the ‘Organon’ of Aristotle. It is hardly necessary to say that he regarded the syllogism as an organon, and, indeed, as the only organon. It is on his treatment of the question of universals that his chief claim to originality as a logician rests. Previous thinkers had either, like St. Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, been content to adopt without criticism the Arabian division of universals as ‘ante rem,’ ‘in re,’ and ‘post rem,’ or, like Roscellin, Anselm, and Abelard, had entirely failed to bring the controversy to a clear issue. Duns discarded the Arabian classification, and set himself to think out the problem de novo. In this he was only very partially successful, but his labours materially contributed to the establishment of the modern doctrine of conceptualism. Logic he defines as the science of the concept, and the concept as the mean between the thing and the word (Works, i. 125). The thing in itself (‘quiditas rei absoluta quantum est de se’) he declares to be neither universal nor singular, but ‘indifferent’ (ib. ii. 546). On the other hand, he holds the singular or individual thing to be real, and, indeed, the final reality. The question of the nature of individuality, or, as he puts it, of the ‘principium individuationis,’ is one of the points in which he differs most decidedly from St. Thomas Aquinas. By one set of thinkers numerical unity, by another matter had been held to be the ‘principium individuationis.’ St. Thomas Aquinas seems to have given countenance to both views. Of the second theory Duns disposes by pointing out that matter is itself a universal. To the first he opposes an argument which seems to rest upon the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. Mere numerical unity is too abstract to give individuality. Two things which differed only in number would not differ at all. By individuality is meant ‘unitas signata ut hæc’ (ib. vi. 583), or as he elsewhere says, ‘hæcceitas’ (ib. xi. 327). Individuality is not synonymous with indivisibility, but it does imply a repugnance to division. The individual is related to the species, as the species to the genus (ib. vi. 375, 402, 408, 413, xi. 324–6). He is clear that knowledge begins with the individual, and that the universal is reached by a process of abstraction. By abstraction, however, he does not mean merely the process of denuding a perception of all but its particular elements, which, since all in his view are particular, would result in nothing at all, but the process of noting points of agreement and neglecting differences. By this process the universal is, properly speaking, created. He denies, however, that it is on that account a figment. A figment has nothing corresponding to it in the objective world, and this the universal has, viz. a cause moving the mind to the formation of the concept. This objective cause is likeness (ib. i. 90). Likeness, he holds, must be an objective reality, otherwise the only unity in the universe would be numerical, and this he obviously regards as a reductio ad absurdum of the nominalist position (ib. vi. 336). The foregoing is an exposition of so much of Duns's theory as is intelligible; there is much besides about ‘intelligible species,’ by means of which he supposes that likeness is perceived which is by no means intelligible (ib. iii. ‘De Rer. Princ.’ qu. xiv.). The treatise ‘De Rerum Principio’ contains a lucid and fairly compendious statement of his principal metaphysical theories. He begins by