Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/446

Rh 424 SCHOLASTICISM as a substance (est sed non substat), from the particular things which not merely are (sunt) but also, as subjects of accidents, have substantial existence (svbstant), by con- sidering only their substantial similarity or conformity. The universals are thus forms inherent in things "native forms," according to the expression by which Gilbert's doctrine is concisely known. The individual consists of an assemblage of such forms ; and it is individual because nowhere else is exactly such an assemblage to be met with. The form exists concretely in the individual things (sensibilis in re sensibili), for in sensible things form and matter are always united. But they may be conceived abstractly or non-sensuously by the mind (sed mente con- cipitur insensibilis and they then refer themselves as copies to the Ideas their divine exemplars. In God, who is pure form without matter, the archetypes of material things exist as eternal immaterial forms. In this way Gilbert was at once Aristotelian and Platonist. The dis- tinctions made by him above amount to a formal criticism of categories, and in the same spirit he teaches that no one of the categories can be applied in its literal sense to God. Gilbert was also the author of a purely logical work, De Sex Principiis, in which he criticized the Aristotelian list of the ten categories, drawing a distinction between the first four substance, quality, quantity, and relation (i.e. } according to Gilbert, indeterminate or potential rela- tion) which he called formae inhaerentes, and the remain- ing six, which he maintained belong to an object only through its actual relation to other objects (respectu alte- rius). To these six, therefore, he gave the name of formae assi$tentes. This distinction was adopted in all the schools till the 16th century, and the treatise De Sex Principiis was bound up with the Isagoge and the Categories. Abelard. But by far the most outstanding figure in the contro- versies of the first half of the 12th century is Abelard (Petrus Abselardus, also called Palatinus from Pallet, the place of his birth, 1079-1142). Abelard was successively the pupil of Roscellinus and William of Champeaux, and the contrast between their views doubtless emphasized to him at an early period the extravagances of extreme Nominalism and extreme Realism. He speedily acquired a reputation as an unrivalled dialectician, the name Peri- pateticus being bestowed upon him in later years to signify this eminence. Almost before he had emerged from the pupillary state, he came forward in public as the acute and vehement critic of his masters' doctrines, especially that of William of Champeaux, whom Abelard seems ultimately to have superseded in Paris. About Abelard's own system there is far from being perfect unanimity of opinion, some, like Ritter and Erdmann, regarding it as a moderate form of Realism, a return indeed to the position of Aristotle, while others, like Cousin, Remusat, Haureau, and Ueberweg, consider it to be essentially Nominalistic, only more prudently and perhaps less consistently ex- pressed than was the case with Roscellinus. His position is ordinarily designated by the name Conceptualism, though there is very little talk of concepts in Abelard's own writings ; and Conceptualism, Haureau tells us, " c'est le nominalisme raiaonnable." There can be no doubt, at all events, that Abelard himself intended to strike out a via media between the extreme Nominalism of Roscellinus and the views of the ordinary Realists. As against Realism he maintains consistently Res de re non praedicatur; genera and species, therefore, which are predicated of the individual subject, cannot be treated as things or sub- stances. This is manifestly true, however real the facts may be which are designated by the generic and specific names ; and the position is fully accepted, as has been seen, by a Realist like Gilbert, who perhaps adopted it first from Abelard. Abelard also perceived that Realism, by separ- ating the universal substance from the forms which indi- vidualize it, makes the universal indifferent to these forms, and leads directly to the doctrine of the identity of all beings in one universal substance or matter a pantheism which might take either an Averroistic or a Spinozistic form. Against the system of non-difference Abelard has a number of logical and traditional arguments to bring, but it is sufficiently condemned by his fundamental doctrine that only the individual exists in its own right. For that system still seems to recognize a generic sub- stance as the core of the individual, whereas, according to Cousin's rendering of Abelard's doctrine, "only individuals exist, and in the individual nothing but the individual." The individual Socrates may be said to be made Socrates by the form Socratitas; now "the subject of this form is not humanity in itself but that particular part of human nature which is the nature of Socrates. The matter in the individual Socrates is therefore quite as much indi- vidual as his form " (p. clxxiv.). Holding fast then on the one hand to the individual as the only true substance, and on the other to the traditional definition of the genus as that which is predicated of a number of individuals (quod praedicatur de pluribus), Abelard declared that this definition of itself condemns the Realistic theory ; only a name, not a thing, can be so predicated, not the name, however, as & flatus vocis or a collection of letters, but the name as used in discourse, the name as a sign, as having a meaning in a word, not vox but sermo. Sermo est praedicabilis. By these distinctions Abelard hoped to escape the consequences of extreme Nominalism, from which, as a matter of history, his doctrine has been dis- tinguished under the name of Conceptualism, seeing that it lays stress not on the word as such but on the thought which the word is intended to convey. Moreover, Abelard evidently did not mean to imply that the distinctions of genera and species are of arbitrary or merely human imposition. His favourite expression for the universal is " quod de pluribus natum est praedicari " (a translation of Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 7), which would seem to point to a real or objective counterpart of the products of our thought ; and the traditional definitions of Boetius, whom he frequently quotes, support the same view of the concept as gathered from a number of individuals in virtue of a real resemblance. What Abelard combats is the substantiation of these resembling qualities, which leads to their being regarded as identical in all the separate individuals, and thus paves the way for the gradual undermining of the individual, the only true and indivisible substance. But he modifies his Nominalism so as to approach, though somewhat vaguely, to the position of Aristotle himself. At the same time he has nothing to say against the Platonic theory of universalia ante rem, the Ideas being interpreted as exemplars, existing in the divine understanding before the creation of things. Abelard's discussion of the problem (which it is right to say is on the whole incidental rather than systematic) is thus marked by an eclecticism which was perhaps the source at once of its strength and its weakness. Remusat characterizes his teaching as displaying " rather an origin- ality of talent than of ideas," and Prantl says that in the sphere of logic his activity shows no more independence than that of perhaps a hundred others at the same time. But his brilliant ability and restless activity made him the central figure in the dialectical as in the other discussions of his time. To him was indirectly due, in the main, that troubling of the Realistic waters which resulted in so many modifications of the original thesis ; and his own somewhat eclectic ruling on the question in debate came to be tacitly accepted in the schools, as the ardour of the disputants began to abate after the middle of the century.