is clearly analysed by Cousin:-The final conclusion of TRA Boethius,' says this writer, upon the three questions contained in the sentence of Porphyry, is (1) that in one sense genera and species may be regarded as possessing an independent existence, though not in another; (2) that they are themselves incorporeal but exist only in corporeal objects of sense; (3) that though they have no real existence save in the individual and sensible object, they may be conceived, apart from the sensible and particular, as incorporeal and selfsubsistent. According to Plato, says Boethius, genera, species, and universals, exist not only as concepts of the intelleet, but independently of sensible objects and abstracted from them; according to Aristotle, they have no real existence save in sensible objects and are universal and immaterial only 1s apprehended by the mind. It remains but to add that Boethius does not pretend to decide between the two; the decision of the controversy belongs to a higher branch of philosophy. If he has given us the Aristotelian e nelusion, it is not because he approves it rather than that of I''sta, but because the treatise on which he is commenting is an introduction to the Categories,-the work of Aristotle himself. From this statement, which is scrupulously accurate, it is evident that it Bothius in his first commentary would seem to favour without reservation and with but little judgement the Platonic theory; in the second, without a single opinion upon the question of Universals that can be called les own, but solely in his cucity as translator and comment for on Aristotle adopts the Peripatetic theory, cunnerates at with equal lucidity, follows it out into ealer d'e det »l, devoting but a single line to the the ry of P.; and it was thus that, of the two great scheids which bad divided antiquity, one only, that of Aristotle, B.. to any extent known, off ring in leod with 1 pet to the problesa of Porphyry a doctrine not alt gether satisfa tory, but at least clear and well det 1 Add to this that the Introduction by Porphyry and the two woks of Artoth tray Boothus, are works on lege and grammar; that these only were studied and commented on ind this a'w xys in confum ty

by

DICTION.

INTRO with Boethius; and it is evident that from this exclusive study there could scarcely result anything but tendencies and intellectual habits entirely opposed to realism'.'

to the ninth

Century.

It will scarcely be deemed necessary that we should produce further evidence to shew-that not simply were the main features of the Realistic controversy carefully preserved in the pages of the best known author of the earlier Middle. Ages, but that the Aristotelian refutation was especially familiar to the learned of those times; and it is further to Dee of be observed that the gloss of Rabanus Maurus quoted by Mr Lewes in his History of Philosophy, and erroneously contro attributed by him to Boethius, constitutes not the locus classicus, as he has inferred, for the origin of the controversy, but is rather evidence that the controversy was sufficiently familiar to the age in which Rabanus wrote to permit him to indicate it by nothing more than a passing allusion'. Cousin, indeed, has ventured to surmise that, inasmuch as Rabanus was a pupil of Alcuin at Tours and afterwards. himself head of the school founded by Charlemagne at Fulda, this gloss may possibly represent the dialectical teaching of those schools. However this may be, it is sufficiently certain that the great dispute respecting Universals did not remain fossilised in three words from the time of Boëthius to that of Roscellinus, but that it was to a certain extent familiar to the students of the ninth and tenth centuries, and that when the daring upholder of ultra-Nominalism came forward to

1 Cousin, Fragments Philosophi ques, Abelard, pp. 100–102. The arguments which Boethius brings forward are borrowed from Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bks. 111 and vin pp. 62, 158, 174, ed. Brandis.

The following is the original of the passage quoted by Mr Lewes (Hist. of Phil. 11 25);-Intentio Porphyrii est in hoc opere facilem intellectum ad Prædicamenta præparare, tractando de quinque rebus vel rocibus, genere scilicet, specie, differentia, proprio et accidente, quorum cognitio ralet ad Prædicamentorum cognitionem. Mr Lewes (while quoting Cousin as his authority) has, as it appears te me, fallen into error on

three points: (1) in ascribing to Boethius the foregoing passage, which as Cousin expressly states is part of the gloss of Rabanus Maurus ; (2) in applying the comments of Cousin on the translation of Porphyry by Boethius in the sixth century, to the gloss of Rabanus Maurus in the ninth; (3) in leaving it to be inferred that the above fragment of this gloss was the sole surviving passage wherein the question of Universals was adverted to by Boethius. So erroneous a representation of the history of what Mr Lewes himself terms the "Great Dispute' of these times, attests a very hasty consultation of his authority.

which appeared inevitably to lead up an insuperable barrier, and hence the controversy, commencing between this Anselm, which so long divided the learning

of these times. Into the details of this 's not within our province to enter'. For " centuries it formed the rallying point of rties, and the Schools re-echoed to cries of te rem, and universalia in re. John of Salisabout the year 1152, relates how when he Oxford after his residence at Paris, whither he to study the canon law, he found the wordy warfare undiminished vigour. The science of sciences, as aurus had called it, seemed likely altogether to e rest. The enthusiasm of the disputants was to his cool, practical, English mind, and elicited expressions of unqualified contempt,-the earliest, that greeted the ears of the learned of that period. ing forth,' he said, 'some new opinion concerning and species, that had escaped Boethius, and of which ..s ignorant, but which they by wonderful good fortune xtracted from the mine of Aristotle. They are preto solve the old question, in working at which the has grown old, and more time has been expended than Caesars employed in winning and governing the universe, money spent than Croesus ever possessed. Long has is question exercised numbers throughout their whole lives; this single discovery has been the sole object of their search; and they have eventually failed to arrive at any result whatever. The reason I suppose was that their curiosity was unsatisfied with that which alone could be discovered. as in the shadow of any body the substance of solidity is vainly

ore

modo plures personæ, quarum singula quæque est perfectus Deus, sint Deus unus? De Fide Trinitatis sive Incarnatione Verbi, contra blasphemias Verbi, quoted by Cousin.

For an impartial account of the controversy, see Appendix (A) to ProAssor Bain's Mental and Moral

For

Science; Hauréau, Philosophie Scholastique; Hampden's Bampton Lectures, Lect. 11; and, for the important question of the relation of the Categories and the Isagoge of Porphyry to the controversy, Dean Mansel's Artis Logica Rudimenta, Appendix, Note A.

sought for, so in those things that belong to the intellect, TRO and can only be conceived as universals but cannot exist as universals, the substance of a more solid existence cannot be discerned. To wear out a life in things of this kind is to work, teach, and do nothing; for these are but the shadows of things, ever fleeing away and vanishing the more quickly the more eagerly they are pursued'. It is an oft repeated reminder to which he gives utterance in his writings, that the dialectic art however admirable is not the sum and end of human acquirement'. To such vagaries the school presaded over by Bernard of Chartres at the close of the eleventh at t century offers an agreeable contrast. Grammar and rhetoric appear to have there been taught after a far less mechanical fashion; an attention to correct Latinity was inculcated, nyd TM* Cicero and Quintilian were studied as models. The Roman poets were not neglected, and the whole system of instruction elicited the commendation of the writer above quoted. It is to be observed indeed, that Lanfranc, Anselm, John of Competing Salisbury', and Giraldus Cambrensis wrote far puter Latin than is subsequently to be found among those whose taste was completely corrupted by the harbarons versions of Aristotle text were studied by the later Schoolmen.

In the year 1109 Anselm died; it was the year in which William of Champeanx opened a school of legie at Paris A nong his pupils was Abelard, and a few years later we see Awland