Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

11.4 ABSTR.ACTION.
iedl on with great warmth in the universities of France, of Germany, and of England, more particularly in the two former countries, where the sovereigns were led, by some political views, to
interest themselves deeply in the contest, and even to employ
the civil power in supporting their favorite opinions. The Emperor Lewis of Bavaria, in return for the assistance which, ill
his disputes with the Pope, Occam had given to him by his
writings, sided with the Nominalists. Lewis the Eleventh of
France, on the other hand, attached himself to the Realists, and
made their antagonists the objects of a cruel persecution.
The dispute to which the foregoing observations relate, although, for some time after the Reformation, interrupted by theological disquisitions, has been since occasionally revived by
different writers, and, singular as it may appear, it has not yet
been brought to a conclusion in which all parties are agreed.
The names, indeed, of Nominalists and Realists exist no longer:
but the point in dispute between these two celebrated sects,
coincides precisely with a question which has been agitated in
our own times, and which has led to one of the most beautiful
speculations of modern philosophy
Doctrines and conclusions of the later Nnominalists. - Of the
advocates who have appeared for the doctrine of the Nominalists, since the revival of letters, the most distinguished are
Hobbes, Berkeley, and iHume. The first has, in various parts
of his works, reprobated the hypothesis of the Realists, and
has stated the opinions of their antagonists with that acuteness,
simplicity, and precision, which distinguish all his writings.*
* " The universality of one name to many things, hath been the cause
that men think the things themselves are universal; and so seriously co.ntend, that, besides Peter and John, and all the rest of the men that are,
have been, or shall be, in the world, there is yet something else that we
call man, namely, Man in general; deceiving themselves, by taking the
universal or general appellation for the thing it signifieth. For if one
should desire the painter to make him the picture of a nman, which is as
much as to say, of a man in general, he meaneeth no more but that the
painter should choose what man he pleaseth to draw, which must needs
be some of them that are, or have been, or may be: none of which are universal. But when we would 1 ave him to draw the picture of the king, or