not great. Indeed, the semi-realism of Duns Scotus resembles the doctrine of Roscellinus more closely than that of Champeaux. WILLIAM DURAND of Saint-Pourçain,1 first a disciple of St. Thomas, then influenced by the doctrines of Scotus, comes still nearer to nominalism in formulating the following thesis: To exist means to be an individual. Finally, the Franciscan WILLIAM of OCCAM,2 the precursor and fellow-countryman of John Locke, openly antagonizes realism as an absurd system. According to the realists, he says, the universal exists in several things at once; now the same thing cannot exist simultaneously in several different things; hence the universal is not a thing, a reality (res), but a mere sign that serves to designate several similar things, a word (nomen); and there is nothing real except the individual.3

Scepticism is the necessary consequence of nominalism, which has already been outlined in § 33. Science has for its object the general, the universal, the necessary. The science of man, let us say in the spirit of Plato, does not deal with Peter for the sake of Peter, or with Paul for the sake of Paul; it studies Peter and Paul in order to know what man is. It is the universal man, the species. man, whom it seeks in the individual. The same is true of all sciences. Now, if the universal is a mere word having no objective reality, and if the individual alone is real, then there can be no anthropology, nor any science.

1 Born in Auvergne, died 1332, Bishop of Meaux. Comment. in mag. sentent., Paris, 1508; Lyons, 1568.

2 Died 1343. Quodlibeta septem, Strasburg, 1491; Summa totius logices, Paris, 1488; Oxford, 1675; Quæstiones in libros physicorum, Strasburg, 1491; Quæstiones et decisiones in quatuor lib. sent., Lyons, 1495; Centilogium theol., Lyons, 1496; Expositio aurea super totam artem veterem, Bologna, 1496. [Cf. W. A. Schreiber, Die politischen und religiösen Doctrinen unter Ludwig dem Baier, Landshut, 1858; Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, Vol. III., pp. 327–420. - TR.]

* Oceam, In l. I. sententiarum, dist. 2, question 8.

We can know and tell what both Peter and Paul are; we can study each particular plant and animal; but the universal man, plant, and animal can never become objects of science, because they nowhere exist. Hence, nominalism is sceptical of science; its motto agrees with that of Protagoras: The individual is the measure of all things.

The highest science, theology, does not escape William's sceptical criticisms. He accepts the teaching of his master, and declares that it is impossible to demonstrate the exist ence and unity of God. The ontological and cosmological arguments are equally weak, in his judgment, and the necessity for the existence of a first cause seems to him to be a purely hypothetical necessity. Indeed, reason may invariably oppose the no less probable theory of the infinite causal series. Hence, there can be no rational or scientific theology; and if the science pursued by such thinkers as Origen, Augustine, Anselmus, and Thomas is impossible, then Scholasticism itself becomes a mere heap of barren hypotheses. Science belongs to God, faith to man.

Let the doctors of the Church recognize the futility of their speculations, and become interpreters of practical truth and propagators of the faith! Let the Church abandon this empty, terrestrial science! Let her cast off all the worldly elements with which she has been tainted by her contact with the world; let her reform and return to the simplicity, purity, and holiness of the Apostolic times! Though Occam sided with the King in the quarrel between Philip the Fair and the Holy See; and though he fled from France and offered his services to Louis of Bavaria, who was also at loggerheads with the Vicar of Christ, he was neither hostile nor indifferent to the Church.

f. 1.

1 Occam, In l. I. sentent., dist. 3, quest. 4; Centilogium theologicum,

2 He is said to have addressed the following remark to Louis: Tu me defendas gladio, ego te defendam calamo.

On the contrary, like all true followers of St. Francis, he felt a deep love for his spiritual mother. And because he loved her, he desired to see her great and holy and removed from the harmful influences of the world; he could not approve of the Pope's interference with the temporal affairs of the European States. It was his devotion to the Church that forced him to make common cause with the enemies of the Holy Father.

Nominalism not only weakens the alliance between faith and science; it also attempts to sever the bond which had for centuries united the Church with the world. Its reappearance not only marks the decline of Scholasticism; simultaneously with it, we notice the first symptoms of the decadence of the Papal power, to which the European monarchs henceforth offer a successful resistance. The nominalism of Occam, though sincere in its desire to promote the welfare of the Church, nevertheless resembles all philosophy; it mirrors the ruling purpose of the age, i. e., the necessity on part of the secular powers, the states, the nations, the languages, intellectual culture, the arts, the sciences, and philosophy, to shake off the yoke of Christian Rome. From the reappearance of nominalism we date the first beginnings of national life and modern languages, and the opposition to the political, religious, and literary centralization, to which the heir of Caesarean traditions had subjected Europe. Nominalism therefore conceals beneath its seeming devotion to the Church and its pious contempt for science, a mass of tendencies hostile to Catholicism. And the Church gives it the same reception which she had given Aristotle a century before: she condemns it. But the heresy had taken deep root this time; it satisfied the political, intellectual, and religious strivings of the epoch too well to be suppressed.

The doctrines of Durand and Occam gave the signal for the struggle between the realists and nominalists. The con

flict raged during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it transformed the universities into veritable fields of battle -the expression is not a metaphor and continued down to the Renaissance and Reformation. Realism had distinguished followers during the fourteenth century, e. g., WALTER BURLEIGH, who defended it in the name of science and philosophy; THOMAS OF BRADWARDINE, Archbishop of Canterbury, who upheld it in the name of the faith, and accused Occam of Pelagianism; THOMAS OF STRASBURG, and MARSILIUS OF INGHEN,3 the first rector of the University of Heidelberg, who tried to reconcile the opposing doctrines. But even in its conceptualistic form, it attracted only the most speculative minds; the clear and well-defined conceptions of nominalism appealed more and more to what is called common-sense. In spite of the obstinate resistance of the realistic party and of the government which this party had succeeded in interesting in its behalf, the teachings of Occam eventually made their way into the Sorbonne, where they were ably reproduced by JOHN BURIDAN, and more or less modified in the dogmatic sense, by PIERRE D'AILLY, the eagle of France.

Nominalism represented the reformatory tendencies of the times, and could not but triumph.

§ 42. Downfall of Scholasticism.

Revival of the Interest

in Nature and Experimental Science. Roger Bacon. Mysticism

In vain did the nominalist Pierre d'Ailly struggle against the conclusions of Occam, and attempt to defend

1 Died 1349.

2 Died 1357.

3 Died 1396.

* Died about 1360. He wrote Summa dialect, Paris, 1487; Comp. log., Venice, 1480; and a series of commentaries on Aristotle, published in Paris and Oxford.

5 Died 1425. Quæstiones super quatuor l. sent., Strasburg, 1490; Tractatus et sermones, 1190.

Scholasticism against the claims of scepticism. The alliance between the essential elements of Scholasticism had been seriously weakened. It is true, Occam, Durand, Buridan, and Gabriel Biel,1 are sceptics only in metaphysics; still by holding that we can know nothing of God, Providence, the Fall, Redemption, Resurrection, and Judgment, and that we must be content with believing all these doctrines, they make them uncertain and problematical, and involuntarily advance the cause of heterodoxy. They themselves give up science for faith; others, who are less devoted to the Church, gradually abandon faith and become freethinkers. Thus in 1347, JOHN OF MERCURIA, a member of the Cistercian order, was condemned for having taught: (1) that everything that happens in the world, the evil as well as the good, is effected by the divine will; (2) that sin is a good rather than an evil; (3) that he who succumbs to an irresistible temptation does not sin. Thus also in 1342, a bachelor of theology, NICOLAS OF AUTRICURIA, had the boldness to present the following theses to the Sorbonne : (1) We shall easily and quickly reach certain knowledge, if we abandon Aristotle and his commentaries, and devote ourselves to the study of nature itself. (2) It is true, we conceive God as the most real being, but we cannot know whether such a being exists or not. (3) The universe is infinite and eternal; for a passage from non-being to being is inconceivable. Such expressions of free thought were as yet uncommon, but for that very reason all the more remarkable.

Speculative philosophy and its anti-scholastic strivings received a powerful ally in the experimental sciences, which were revived by the study of Aristotle's works on physics and by the influence of the Arabian schools of Spain; to these we owe our system of numerals, the elementary principles of algebra and chemistry, and our

1 Professor at Tübingen, died 1495.