passivity in an essence, must be something actual, else it could not be distinguished from form, and no composite could arise. It may be indefinite, but it is a divine creation without form and before form. In fine, he declares that matter has the entitative act in itself, and not in form. We may scout this whole mode of argumentation, but on the plane of scholasticism it was an advance to something better. At all events it was a break with the system thus shaken to its base.

Again, Thomas had declared that matter in the heavens and on the earth is not the same. In the sublunary region, change rules, or generation and corruption; but these are excluded from the realm of the heavenly bodies.

This again Scotus denied. Matter is the same every-where, and it may be studied in the light of the same laws throughout the universe. Matter, said he, may be predicated of all created things univoce. According to his graphic picture, "the world is a beautiful tree, whose root and germ is first matter, whose leaves are accidents, whose boughs and branches are corruptible creatures, whose flower is the rational soul, and whose fruits are the angels." In another form Se tus represents matter as the common root from which go forth two boughs, the spiritual and the corporeal creature, each again splitting into various twigs, the spiritual into angels and human souls, the corporeal into corruptible and incorruptible bodies. To assert, with Thomas, that the matter of the heavenly bodies is diverse from that on earth, was in the spirit of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy: to assert the identity of matter every-where is to bring it under the sway of universal laws, is to anticipate Nicholas of Cusa, who asserted the motion of the earth before Copernicus.

Once more, Thomas declares that the soul is the form of the body. It stands related to it as form to matter, as actuality to potentiality. Independent validity is denied to the body, whose activity seeins to come wholly from the soul. Such, at least, is the trend of the Thomist doctrine. Now Scotus brings in something entirely new. There is a substantial form of the body as such, a form by which the body exists as organic body. This Scotus calls the form of corporeity or the form of the mixed. Thus the organic body is conditioned by another form than the soul. Thus body and soul are extricated from that

thorough interpenetration which they had in the scholastic thought, and assume a sort of independence of each other. It did not take long for this separation in thought to make way for a new science and to disentangle physiology from psychology, which absorbed all before. In fact, all these distinctions regarding matter, giving it a validity apart from form, indicate the passage of metaphysics from the idea of substantial forms to that of force, which is the modern notion. The Possest of Nicholas of Cusa and the Monad of Bruno are but stages in the progress from Scotus to Leibnitz.

Turn now to the position of Duns Scotus upon the question of Universals. It has been said by Haureau, in his "History of Scholastic Philosophy," that Scotus was more of a realist than Thomas. Haureau represents him, in fine, as adding to the scholastic refinements and realizing vastly more abstractions than had ever been done before. Erdmann tells us that there was no difference, on the question of universals or general ideas, between Thomas and Scotus, save that the latter declared them to exist formally in things. Still he does not seem to weigh this distinction properly, for the formalities of Scotus play a significant rôle in his system. To the question, Are Universals real or only abstractions from things? is, for instance, humanity a reality or only an abstraction from existent men? Albert and Thomas and Scotus all were agreed. Their answer was, Humanity exists as an archetype in the divine mind, as they said, before things-as the quiddity or essence in things-as an abstraction from them in our thought, after things. Thus, as Erdmann says, Scotus has left the contention between Realist and Nominalist behind him. The exact distinction between Thomas and Scotus, or the Realists and Formalists, was this. The Realists held to a twofold distinction, the real distinction and the mental. In this latter there was a further distinction, namely, purely mental and virtual; that is, without foundation in the thing, and with foundation in the thing. Universals, then, they held, were based upon a mental distinction, but with a foundation in the thing.

Now, the Formalists made a third distinction, lying between the real and the mental, namely, the formal. They called it "a distinction from the nature of the thing." It is less than the real, but more than the mental distinction. Thus, they said, in

actuality there are not only things but formalities. According to Scotus, "nature itself is of itself indifferent to universal and individual being." The individual is a unity which is incommunicable, but the universal is a unity which may be participated in by many individuals.

The comparative insignificance of the question of Universals to Scotus is seen in the fact that he devotes to it only seven or eight pages of his twelve folio volumes. That he is not an extreme Realist, as IIauneau asserts, is evident from his own words. Thus he says, "The universal, in so far as universal, is nothing in existence;" and again, "Universality or the not this, attaches to nothing except in the intellect." All his commentators, from Lychetus to Wadding, assert as his view that "the universal does not exist on the part of the thing." Besides, the Scotists generally had a warm side toward the Nominalists. It is true Mayronis pushed the realist doctrine to an extreme, but Peter Aureolus, of his school, immediately after found the way to nominalism.

The doctrine of formalities, then, played an important part in the system of Scotus. The exigency of the Trinitarian doctrine first called it forth. The persons of the Trinity, he said, were formalities, thinking thus to save the dogma of the Church. But it is evident that this whole doctrine of formalities is an utter break with scholasticism, which ever clung to matter and form as exhaustive of reality. Here was a new entity placed in the bosom of things. It needed only Occam to come into the tangled scholastic forest, and, with his hatchet of parsimony, to cut away all unnecessary entities.

Scotus may not be consistent with himself, but his utterances may be made harmonious with the essential truth of realism, which is this. Universals give us in outline the norm of the Divine procedure in creation. As Agassiz states it in reference to the animal kingdom," in tracing (the natural system) the human mind is only translating into human language the Divine thoughts expressed in nature in living realities."

3. Let us pass now to the central question of Scotus, the principle of Individuation. Which is the truly real, the universal or the singular, the genus or the individual? The main question of realism lay behind Scotus, as we have seen; but how does he explain the individual? The question of In

dividuation was one which occupied all the scholastics, and whose answer in Scotus opened the way through the forest of abstractions, and disclosed the path of modern science.

Abelard had said, each individual is composed of matter and form. The matter of Socrates is humanity, the form is Socratitas. Form in general, then, is the individuating principle with Abelard. Thomas made matter to be this principle, matter designated by certain dimensions, by the here and the now. For Socrates we must say this flesh and these bones, not flesh and bones absolutely. The current expression in the school was "matter quantitatively determined."

Now comes Scotus, and changes all this, introducing a destructive factor into the system. The principle of individuation cannot be matter, for this is generic, and individuality must come from elsewhere. It cannot be a negation or a deficiency, as matter is according to the Thomist view, but must rather be something positive and a perfection. The individual unity must be grounded in a positive entity, which is added to the generic nature. Now, this positive entity cannot be a mere accident like quantity, according to Thomas, but, as form to matter, it contracts the species to individual being. Thus, in general, form plays the rôle of individuation in the Scotist system; and its principle is "the last reality of form." Nevertheless, this last clement is not to be considered a thing added to the species as another thing, but it is "the last reality of being." To this ultimate element Scotus himself, in one place at least, gives the name Hæcceitas, and his scholars commonly use this term. Hæcceity, then, or thisness, is to Scotus the principle of individuation. But the individual form is not distinguished from the specific, as thing from thing; rather the distinction is between two realities of the same thing. Here, again, comes in his doctrine of formalities, for it is a formal distinction. Scotus thus shows again that the rubrics of matter and form are not sufficient to account for individual being. He virtually introduces a new substantial principle in the line of form, which yet is the last reality of being. Thus the question of Universals is of but little consequence to Scotus, compared to that of the individual. It is true he does not draw out the full result of this great innovation. Of the essential and the individual, Thomas emphasizes only the

essential. Occam holds only to the individual. Scotus, in holding to both, and with persistency to the latter, breaks up scholasticism, and gives us to see in the distant perspective of the future the modern idea of force as substantial. The hæcceity of Scotus is the precursor of this notion through Nicholas and Bruno and Leibnitz.

Through this aperçu of Scotus the light broke in upon Peter Aureolus, who said, Every thing actual is, as such, individual; also upon Durandus, who said, The primal cause which gives being to the thing, gives it, eo ipso, individual being. Occam but repeated this in saying, that being and individual being are coincident.

The significance of the question of Individuation to Leibnitz may be seen in the fact that he wrote a dissertation on the subject quite early in his career, and thereby gained his Baccalaureate. He criticises Scotus, it is true, who was bound in the hamper of scholasticism, and held on to matter and form. Leibnitz broke with them utterly, and hence his dictum on this question is essentially the same with Aureolus and Occam: "Every individual is individuated by his whole entity." The entelechy of Aristotle becomes the monad, and the substantial forms of the scholastics become forces.

4. A great advance of thought is seen in Scotus' doctrine of God. Thomas had never succeeded in freeing himself from the apprehension of the Divine as substance. To him God is absolute being. Thought and will are only subordinate factors in the divine essence. Being thus, not necessarily conceived as spirituality, is the very heart of the Divine Essence. He has not disentangled himself from the notion of the PseudoDionysius of the essential incognizability of God, for no predicates are applicable to him. God can be known only by dim and distant reflection of the external world. Thus the emphasis of the transcendence of God leads to a representation of him, after the spirit of Spinoza, as the absolute substance, in relation to which all other things and beings are but accidents. The immanence of God in the human soul, by which knowledge of God and communion with him are mediated, is ignored. As he then is the only true being, all definite existence is a mode of the Divine Substance. The solvent word with Aquinas is participation. The creature participates in being. Even the