an article of faith, the philosophical arguments for and against being inconclusive.
The question of universals, though fully discussed, no longer forms the centre of speculation. The great age of Scholasticism presents, indeed, a substantial unanimity upon this vexed point, maintaining at once, in different senses, the existence of the universals ante rem, re and post rem. Albert and Aquinas both profess the moderate Aristotelian Realism which treats genera and species only as substantiae secundae, yet as really inherent in the individuals, and constituting their form or essence. The universals, therefore, have no existence, as universals, in rerum natura; and Thomas endorses, in this sense, the polemic of Aristotle against Plato's hypostatized abstractions. But, in the Augustinian sense of ideas immanent in the divine mind, the universal ante rem may well be admitted as possessing real existence. Finally, by abstraction from the individual things of sense, the mind is able to contemplate the universal apart from its accompaniments (animal sine homine, asino, et aliis speciebus); these subjective existences are the universalia post rem of the Nominalists and Conceptualists. But the difficulties which embarrassed a former age in trying to conceive the mode in which the universal exists in the individual reappear in the systems of the present period as the problemThe principle of individuation. of the principium individuationis. The universal, as the form or essence of the individual, is called its quidditas (its " what-ness " or nature); but, besides possessing a general nature and answering to a general definition (i.e. being a " what "), every man, for example, is this particular man, here and now. It is the question of the particularity or " this-ness " (haecceitas, as Duns Scotus afterwards named it) that embarrasses the Scholastics. Albert and Aquinas agree in declaring that the principle of individuation is to be found in matter, not, however, in matter as a formless substrate but in determinate matter (materia signata), which is explained to mean matter quantitatively determined in certain respects. " The variety of individuals," says Albert, " depends entirely upon the division of matter," and Aquinas says the principle of the diversity of individuals of the same species is the quantitative division of matter," which his followers render by the abbreviated phrase materia quanta. A tolerably evident shortcoming of such a doctrine is that, while declaring the quantitative determination of matter to be the individual element in the individual, it gives no account of how such quantitative determination arises. Yet the problem of the individual is really contained in this prior question; for determinate matter already involves particularity or this-ness. This difficulty was presently raised by Duns Scotus and the realistically-inclined opponents of the Thomist doctrine. But, as Ueberweg points out, it might fairly be urged by Aquinas that he does not pretend to explain how the individual is actually created, but merely states what he finds to be an invariable condition of the existence of individuals. Apart from this general question, a difficulty arises on the Thomist theory in regard to the existence of spirits or disembodied personalities. This affects first of all the existence of angels, in regard to whom Aquinas admits that they are immaterial or separate forms (formae separatae). They possess the principle of individuation in themselves, he teaches, but plurality of individuals is in such a case equivalent to plurality of species (in eis tot sunt species quot sunt individua). The same difficulty, however, affects the existence of the disembodied human spirit. If individuality depends in matter, must we not conclude with Averroes that individuality is extinguished at death, and that only the universal form survives ? This conclusion, it is needless to say, is strenuously opposed both by Albert and by Aquinas. It is still admissible, however, to doubt whether the hateful consequence does not follow consistently from the theory laid down. Aquinas regards the souls of men, like the angels, as immaterial forms; and he includes in the soul-unit, so to speak, not merely the anima rationalis of Aristotle, but also the vegetative, sensitive, appetitive and motive functions. The latter depend, it is true, on bodily organs during our earthly sojourn, but the dependence is not necessary. The soul is created by God when the body of which it is the entelechy is prepared for it. It is the natural state of the soul to be united to a body, but being immaterial it is not affected by the dissolution of the body. The soul must be immaterial since it has the power of cognizing the universal; and its immortality is further based by St Thomas on the natural longing for unending existence which belongs to a being whose thoughts are not confined to the " here " and " now," but are able to abstract from every limitation.
Thomism, which was destined to become the official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church, became in the first instance the accepted doctrine of the Dominican orderDuns Scotus., who were presently joined in this allegiance by the Augustinians. The Franciscan order, on the other hand, early showed their rivalry in attacks upon the doctrines of Albert and Aquinas. One of the first of these was the Reprehensorium seu correctorium fratris Thomae, published in 1285 by William Lamarre, in which the Averroistic consequences of the Thomist doctrine of individuation are already pressed home. More important was Richard of Middletown (d. c. 1300), who anticipated many of the objections urged soon after him by Duns Scotus (q.v.). His system is conditioned throughout by its relation to that of Aquinas, of which it is in effect an elaborate criticism. The chief characteristic of this criticism is well expressed in the name bestowed on Duns by his contemporaries - Doctor subtilis. It will be sufficient therefore to note the chief points in which the two antagonists differ. In general it may be said that Duns shows less confidence in the power of reason than Aquinas, and to that extent Erdmann and others are right in looking upon his system as the beginning of the decline of Scholasticism. For Scholasticism, as perfected by Aquinas, implies the harmony of reason and faith, in the sense that they both teach the same truths. To this general position Aquinas, it has been seen, makes several important exceptions; but the exceptions are few in number and precisely defined. Scotus extends the number of theological doctrines which are not, according to him, susceptible of philosophical proof, including in this class the creation of the world out of nothing, the immortality of the human soul, and even the existence of an almighty divine cause of the universe (though he admits the possibility of proving an ultimate cause superior to all else). His destructive criticism thus tended to reintroduce the dualism between faith and reason which Scholasticism had laboured through centuries to overcome, though Scotus himself, of course, had no such sceptical intention. But the way in which he founded the leading Christian doctrines (after confessing his inability to rationalize them) on the arbitrary will of God was undoubtedly calculated to help in the work of disintegration. And it is significant that this primacy of the undetermined will (voluntas superior intellectu) was the central contention of the Scotists against the Thomist doctrine. Voluntary action, Aquinas had said, is action originating in self or in an internal principle. The freedom here spoken of is a freedom from the immediacy of impulse - a freedom based upon our possession of reason as a power of comparison, memory and forethought. Nothing is said of an absolute freedom of the will; the will is, on the contrary,Freedom of the will. subordinated to the reason in so far as it is supposed to choose what reason pronounces good. Accordingly, the Thomist doctrine may be described as a moderate determinism. To this Scotus opposed an indeterminism of the extremest type, describing the will as the possibility of determining itself motivelessly in either of two opposite senses. Transferred to the divine activity, Aquinas's doctrine led him to insist upon the perseitas boni. The divine will is, equally with the human, subject to a rational determination; God commands what is good because it is good. Scotus, on the other hand, following out his doctrine of the will, declared the good to be so only by arbitrary imposition. It is good because God willed it, and for no other reason; had He commanded precisely the opposite course of conduct, that course would have been right by the mere fact of His commanding it. Far removed from actuality as such speculations regarding the priority of intellect or will in the Divine Being may seem to be, the side taken is yet a sure index of the general tendency of a philosophy. Aquinas is on the side of rationalism, Scotus on the side of scepticism.
While agreeing with Albert and Thomas in maintaining the threefold existence of the universals, Duns Scotus attacked the Thomist doctrine of individuation. The distinction of the universal essence and the individualizing determinations in the individual does not coincide, he maintained, with the distinction between form and matter. The additional determinations are as truly " form " as the universal essence. If the latter be spoken of as quidditas, the former may be called haecceitas. Just as the genus becomes the species by the addition of formal determinations called the difference, so the species becomes the individual by the addition of fresh forms of difference. As animal becomes homo by the addition of humanitas, so homo becomes Socrates by the addition of the qualities signified by Socratitas. It is false, therefore, to speak of matter as the principle of individuation; and if this is so there is no longer any foundation for the Thomist view that in angelic natures every individual constitutes a species apart. Notwithstanding the above doctrine, however, Scotus holds that all created things possess both matter and form - the soul, for example, possessing a matter of its own before its
