a declaration that ultimate reality is attained not through the perceptions of sense, but through the conceptions of mind, it was the voice of true philosophy. It was only necessary that these conceptions should not be regarded as corresponding to so many distinct entities (a pseudoidea in which the universal and rational is reduced under forms of particularity furnished by the sensuous imagination), but rather as pointing to ideal types, laws, purposes, creative acts of real, i.e. rational, will-endowed power, and this the power of absolute, divine spirit. Such "realism" were what we now and properly understand by positive, not negative or "subjective," philosophical idealism.

The opposite of all this was affirmed by Nominalism, and William of Occam was its influential spokesman. On the plea― quite justifiable from the point of view of that side or tendency of mediæval Realism, which I have just been criticising that "entities must not be multiplied without necessity" (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem), he denied the substantive existence of universals (genera and species) as an hypothesis wholly impertinent to the explanation of individual existence. So far this was but a repetition, in substance, of one of Aristotle's criticisms of the Platonic theory of ideas (a criticism perfectly just, if in Aristotle's account of it that theory had been correctly represented). But William of Occam went further than this, and denied that in forming general conceptions the reason of man was actually and successfully stretching out toward the knowledge and comprehension of something more real than and explanatory of individual, sensibly-perceived phenomena. Properly speaking, the mind had, in William's view, no power of "stretching out," or of actively per

forming any other function. In all its cognitive operations it is strictly passive; it is led, not leads. It does not penetrate through the phenomenal to the real. It simply receives, through the senses, impressions; or it observes, not its own actions or nature, but simply the states which are superinduced upon it. In clear and definite impressions, he held, is given our best and most adequate knowledge of particular objects. Yet this knowledge is relative and uncertain. We cannot know that our impressions, or sensible ideas, are correct transcripts of real things. More likely they are not. At most we are only justified in believing our ideas to be signs of things, which for the rest are unknowable. Of these signs, spoken words are still other signs, just as, still further, written words are signs of spoken words. Our general conceptions are simply indefinite, but particular ideas, containing that which several particular objects (or sign-ideas) have in common, but lacking the definite lineaments or representative value of any of them. Thus all our ideas, particular and general, distinct and confused, being essentially nothing but (presumed) signs of objects which produce them, and words (nomina) being signs of these signs, the former are (as signs) of the same nature as the latter, and may hence be called by the same name as the latter (nomina, whence the term Nominalism, or termini, owing to which the name "Terminists" was also given to Occam and his followers).

It will be seen that this doctrine is purely critical and negative. It denies the possibility of knowledge of real existence, and restricts it to the realm of phenomena passively experienced and observed. The mind of man is no longer allowed to contain an element of active, and,

in its sphere, authoritative reason. For the rest, it can know no more its own essence than that of the world or (except as matter of some probability) the existence of the absolute mind, or God. That, in maintaining these positions, William of Occam stands in the same rank with the most celebrated names in the later history of English speculation, is obvious, or will certainly become so before our studies are finished. Prof. Ludwig Noack, in his recently published Lexicon of the History of Philosophy, very accurately terms William of Occam "the most influential forerunner of his countrymen, Francis Bacon, Hobbes, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill."

Along with this philosophical negativism, William professed to keep his faith, and that, too, with more absolute, unquestioning credulity (for that it was, and this it is that generally and necessarily takes the place of philosophical convictions vainly sought or lost) than his partial master, Duns Scotus. In William's view the love of God is a duty flowing only from the sovereign will of God, whom no necessity of things compelled to require this love of us. Indeed, so absolute is God's power and freedom, that no truth of philosophy holds concerning him, and William simply revels in paradox while enumerating some of the physical impossibilities which are possible for God. Theological and "philosophical" truth are thus made utterly disparate and apparently contradictory. But there is no evidence that William, like so many a century or two later, while professing to accept both, was a dissembler with respect to his professed acceptance of the former. In this respect he only carried to the wildest extreme the tendency already commented on in Duns Scotus.

Literature, art, religion, a vigorous, moral, social and political life, are preeminently the works to which philosophy furnishes the corresponding theory. This correspondence was more perfect in earlier times, when the life of man was less complex and variously specialized, than to-day. The most flourishing period of the scholastic philosophy was coeval with the best, most confident, vigorous life of the Middle Ages in most of the directions just enumerated. Its self-extinction was contemporaneous with the beginning of a period of barbarity, into whose darkness the light of the Renaissance was destined finally to shine, with truly regenerating effect. The revival of learning and the reformation of religion were at once cause and sign of a new youth of the Occidental mind. Some of its grandest products we shall contemplate in our next chapter.

CHAPTER III.

ENGLISHMEN OF THE RENAISSANCE-SPENSER, DAVIES,

HOOKER.

THE revival of learning and the religious reformation reached their fulfillment in England in the sixteenth century. The tree of human life blossomed anew, and what magnificent and abundant fruit it bore in England is known to every student of the Elizabethan period of English literature. It is a matter of the deepest significance to note the precise nature of the nourishment, which quickened and supported this new and masterly life, and of the ways in which it actively, spontaneously, powerfully, successfully manifested itself.

The revival of learning meant, so far as it concerns the history of philosophy, the revival, and restoration to honor, of Platonism. And what was that, in distinction from Aristotelianism, which had been so completely absorbed, in form and substance, into the Scholastic philosophy? I admit-every careful student admits -no absolute contrast between Platonism and Aristotelianism. Aristotle was the true disciple, though a critical one, of Plato. Aristotle was the real continuator of Plato, more than the members of the Academic school, in which the tradition of his teaching was guarded. Both Plato and Aristotle held to the same fundamental truth of Idealism. For both, essential reality was not material, but spiritual; the material, as such, or absolutely considered, was non