Page:Science and medieval thought. The Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900 (IA sciencemedievalt00allbrich).pdf/48

 not perceiving indeed that the content of notions is, as Abélard had pointed out plainly, in inverse proportion to their universality. Like Sidney's hooded dove, the blinder they were the higher they strove. For example: from a lump of silver a medal is struck; from many lumps of silver many medals are struck, each different from the other: let us eliminate as accidents the notions of silver, of the blow of a hammer, even of particular features of the devices, and we shall reach the idea of an agent with a type or seal, or of such an agent with many seals, or ideas, who may thus individualise indifferent matter; or, to penetrate deeper into abstraction, who may transfer forms of his own activity to motionless

1 Thus, in ascending from general to more general, in the most general will be sought unique and perfect being; the primary cause and sole object of science the avrocoor of the Alexandrians: whereas by successive eliminations utter ab- stractions would become utter vacuity. To such realists all subordinate beings are integral parts of the primary being. It would serve no useful end here to analyse these doctrines, or to indicate the pythagorean or stoical elements of them; for platonists and realists had their schools and degrees of subtlety; and Plato himself was inconsistent. Some brought secondary agents-demiurges or angels-into more creative activity, others carried creative reason back to the ideal good, and so on.