Chapter 6 (part 2)

185. At this point, we see the true source of sensism in every age. People bring themselves to believe that one is twofold, that is, it exists in several real things such as singular, sensible things secundum esse, and that it exists in the intellect as seen by the intellect. In fact, there is nothing at all in a real individual which has any unity with anything in another real individual. Each real individual is indeed divided and separate from all others. Several exist, but without any kind of unity in their plurality except relative to the intellect which knows them by means of one, sole, identical idea or species.

Hence, that which is one secundum considerationem intellectus and one secundum rationem speciei are not two 'ones' but the same one expressed in two phrases which have an identical, basic meaning. But because we always speak of real, known individuals and believe we are speaking simply of real individuals, we come to believe that the 'one' which we find in the known individuals of which we speak subsists in the real individuals themselves. In fact, 'one' is present only in the known element that we have added through the act by which we know them. This element is the idea or the species with which we know them.

186. Aristotle, therefore, misled himself by placing in real individuals that which is proper only to real, known individuals. He posited in the former that which is present in the latter, the cognitive element, the one proper to the idea alone. Because real individuals are known only on condition of their perception by sense, Aristotle goes on to affirm that sense makes the universal. According to him, sense produces memories, and memory the experience which becomes universal. There is therefore no innate knowledge, nothing that can be called an inborn habit. But we see him hesitating here because he does not dare to conclude, as he should according to the premisses, that there are no inborn habits of knowledge. He simply denies innate, determined habits. This limitation caused the commentators great trouble in providing a clear explanation of his words, and they have never been able to agree. Let us recall the text which immediately follows the words I have already cited.

In other words, although the singular is felt, its sense is universal (that is, sensation itself is universal as though it were a type, although the sensible object is particular),

187. Sensism, although manifest in this passage, is still doubtful and hesitant. Universals are indeed made to come from sense, but sense, says the passage, cannot produce them in every soul. This is reserved for souls apt for such an experience: 'The soul however is such that it can experience this'. It is true that the word 'experience' is obviously sensistic in meaning because it seems that sense alone acts and that the soul receives universals from sense as wax receives impressions from a seal. Nevertheless, if we compare this place with others in Aristotle where he introduces a light into the soul, called 'the light of the acting intellect', we notice that he does not dare deny the presence in the soul of a formal principle of universals. St. Thomas therefore comments on this passage as follows:

Hence, although in Aristotle's text nothing more is required except that 'the soul be able to experience this,' St. Thomas adds that it should also 'be able to do this.' Here, there is a notable distancing from sensism by the way in which our text is adjusted to other texts of Aristotle. But the possible intellect is nothing more than the intellect in potency, that is, the intellective soul in potency; the acting intellect is simply the power, possessed by the intellective soul in potency, for becoming the intellective soul in act, an act which comes to it from outside, that is, from sensations. To say then that the acting intellect 'becomes intelligible things in act THROUGH THE ABSTRACTION OF UNIVERSALS FROM SINGULAR THINGS' confirms what I have said about the error which serves as the universal source of all sensism.

This error is never sufficiently considered. When we abstract the universal from the singular, what singular do we abstract it from? Undoubtedly from the singular which we have already conceived in our mind. We cannot exercise this abstraction on singulars we have not conceived because they are not present to our mind. But are the singulars which we have already conceived and from which we abstract universals the same as non-conceived singulars? This is what we have to see.

The mind, in conceiving them, could have added to them something not present in their pure reality. This also needs investigation, but it was totally forgotten by the philosopher. He did not even think such a question possible, although it is the nub of the whole argument. Granted therefore the state of the question correctly posited, it is easy to discover that singulars, as they are in the mind, are not simply singulars as they are in their reality outside the mind. Indeed, by entering the mind, they have received sensation as their first accompaniment, and the idea in which they are conceived (the idea which contains the universal) as their second.

188. If we now sum up the analysis of human cognitions made by Aristotle and the order in which he distributes them, we find 1. that cognitions furthest from their origin are conclusions; 2. prior to conclusions, the principles from which the conclusions come must be in the mind (consequently, he says in the first book of Physics that universals are known prior to singulars); 3. but the first principles, having no means through which they are demonstrated, are recognised as evident as soon as their terms are conceived — in these terms, the predicate is contained in the notion of the subject (analytical judgments); 4. the question, therefore, of the origin of cognitions is reduced to knowing which are the first terms conceived by the human mind.

Once these first terms have been conceived, the principles are present. From these principles flow immediate conclusions, which are principles relative to more remote conclusions. The terms which are first known are, according to Aristotle, ENS and ONE;(220) they differ only according to the point of view from which they are considered. The whole question of the origin of ideas and of human cognitions is, according to Aristotle, reduced therefore to the question: How do we know ens? How is 'one' known in many singular things? When posited in this way the question is finely put. But this state of the question is buried deep within Aristotelian teaching; it is not found proposed in express terms in any part of Aristotle's works. We now have to see how he resolves the difficulty. Although we have already done this, we must return to the matter.

189. Aristotle had recourse to two causes: sense and the special nature of the soul, which has a potency for halting to consider the common element, the universal, in the sensible thing. Hence, in the second book of the Posterior Analytics he says that sensible cognition is prior to cognition of universals.(221)
But, as I have already said, this is still insufficient to explain the origin of cognitions. It is not enough to say that the soul has the power to form them for itself. Everyone knows this. We need to show the steps through which the potency passes in producing cognitions, and the conditions under which it can produce them.

Aristotle tries to do this. According to him, in summary terms, the human soul is so disposed that, in receiving sensations, it retains the part common to them all which he calls memories. Comparing several memories, the soul then goes on to retain what they have in common. This he calls experience, and thus the soul reaches by way of abstraction the final, abstract elements, that is, the principles.
Here I disregard the unexplained origin of the idea of substance; sensations cannot contain the substance of the external ens. My principal observation is this: Aristotle's whole argument supposes that the common element, that is, the universal, is already presupposed as present in the real, sensible thing or in the real sensation. If not, the soul would be unable to stop to abstract it.

The truth, on the contrary, is that every real, external thing and every real sensation goes no further than itself. It is real and finite, and nothing real has anything in common with another real sense, or with any other real sensation. There is nothing common, therefore, nothing universal in the real, external thing, not even in the sensation which it produces in us, and which itself is real. How, then, can Aristotle believe that he has found what is common, the universal, the one, ens, in the felt element? His illusion springs from what I have already indicated: he attributes to the pure, real thing that which pertains to the real thing already conceived by the mind.

190. I must repeat — and it is never sufficiently emphasised — that the felt element, that is, the external, real thing, sensible in our regard, where the common element or universal resides, is the sensible-real thing as it exists in our mind which has perceived it. This is the object, the already perceived sensible-real ens, on which abstraction alone is exercised. We need, therefore, to explain perception. I have done this in the New Essay where I showed that intellective perception is 'the real, felt thing in so far as it is seen by the understanding in ideal being as its realisation.' Granted this, it is clear that the sensible-perceived-real thing on which abstraction is exercised contains the common element, the universal from which it can be abstracted. The real thing is not simply real; it is that which is real in that which is ideal; it is a real-idea object, a particular-common object. It is not simply real and particular.

191. In conclusion, let me sum up the way in which Aristotle understands how the mind, that is, the intellect, comes to the soul from without. But I cannot do this without first indicating a little known point of philosophical history concerned with the true origin of the famous question about real and nominal things, and true opinions about them which I found carefully laid out in Abelard's work on Porphyry (which I have just quoted, and which is to be found in the Ambrosian Codex). The perceived-sensible-real-ens (perceived by the understanding) is that on which abstraction is exercised. Abstraction separates what is common from this ens. The question immediately arises: does what is common reside in things or in the intellect?

Note first 'one', 'common', or 'universal' means more or less the same. 'Common' simply means that which is 'one' in several entia; 'universal' means that which is 'one' in all possible entia of a single class, or in all entia without distinction. Granted this, Aristotle, as we have seen, found the one in real things, unum in multis, and said that this was the principle of ens. He also found the one in the intellect, unum praeter multa, and said that this was the principle of knowledge.(222) Now it is clear that unum praeter multa was for him the common element abstracted and separated from things; it was the specific or generic idea of the thing whose seat is certainly in the understanding; it was the principle of knowledge in so far as knowledge deals with things theoretically and through abstraction.

It is also clear that unum in multis has to be the common element referred by the mind to single, real, perceived things. The concept of the mind, one as it is, is united and bound in us to each of these singular things. As bound to each of them, I have called it a particular idea. This is the principle proper to expertise or skill, a habit by which we act in an orderly fashion relative to real-particular things. But the order with which skill operates proceeds from the mind's perception of real, particular things. This perception enables them to be seen as like or unlike. In fact, like is the idea itself intuited in several real things or, better, several things seen in the idea itself. Aristotle, therefore, would have been wholly correct both in distinguishing unum in multis from unum praeter multa, and in saying that the former was one itself,(223) provided that he meant by 'one' what is common in perceptions and what is common in any idea separated from perceptions.

But Aristotle's supreme, capital error is that he did not take the thing in this way. Nor did he realise that his reasoning was correct as long as he was speaking about the real-conceived-ens, but incorrect as soon as he began speaking about the pure, real thing. He erred, therefore, by applying to the pure, real thing and to sensation, which is also a singular, real thing, that which is true relative only to the real-perceived-ens. He also erred, therefore, by making the universal, the common element, the one, originate from sense, although he rectified this to some extent by granting the soul a potency for halting before what is common which, however, he posited in things.

192. As far as I know, Aristotle's mistake has remained undiscovered throughout the centuries. The explanation of universals, therefore, has become an unavoidable source of shipwreck for philosophy, has given origin to perpetual, irreconcilable disputes which have uselessly tired and enervated all the preceding centuries, and moreover has driven people away from philosophy. The first commentators, to a great extent, simply repeated Aristotle, and posited the common element sometimes in the sensible, real thing, sometimes in the intellect, sometimes in both. They did this rather incoherently without even noticing the difficulty. Later, some tried to express Aristotle's teaching scientifically and precisely. These stopped at unum in multis, and said that real things truly have something common and one in them. For these philosophers, realists as they were called, what is one belonged to the order of reality.

193. But they soon split. According to Abelard, there were at his time two factions. Some held that the common element must be a reality. They totally excluded every intellectual element, and said that what is common or one in things was matter; what is proper to things is their form.(224) This system is absurd in the extreme because it requires that the same identical matter receive contemporaneously all the various forms in which things are presented. These philosophers, therefore, exchanged the property of matter for the property of ideal being which, as truly identical, is actuated and realised in all forms. They revived the intelligible matter of Plato and the philosophers who preceded him. But this system came to possess two facets. In dealing with real matter it became absurd materialism; the intelligible, the most common element of all, became material in it. In dealing with intelligible matter, it became equally absurd idealism in which real matter is changed into idea.

194. The second group of realists maintained that what is common in real things lies not at the level of matter, but of likeness. This group thus added an intellective element, but did not realise that they were adding something to real ens. They did not notice that they added the idea, in which alone is present the likeness of real things. In other words, real things are seen in the idea of being, where they are measured and compared.(225) Indeed, this group thought they were adding only the act with which the intellect looked at these things, and believed that the likeness seen in real things was in them as real and not as perceived things. This in fact was Aristotle's error.(226)

195. But when teachings are unclear and muddled, not everyone understands them in the same way. Consequently, this second faction was itself divided into two schools, the first of which maintained that the universal posited in singular, real things came about from the aggregation of these things and could not be affirmed of any single one of them;(227) the second, that it was contained in the nature of each single entity.(228)

196. Both sides were right, provided we prescind from the capital error of substituting the perceived-real thing for the pure real thing. On the one hand, the second school is right. Because the idea in which we see things is present in each perceived-real thing, what is common is also present (each idea is a type common to all possible things). But we can also consider the case where the understanding, containing only a single perceived-real thing, is consequently unable to notice that what is common is present to it although, when it later compares several perceived-real things present to it, it immediately notices what is common. Only bringing together several real things in the mind, and comparing them mentally, gives rise, it would seem, to the recognition of what is common.

The difference, therefore, lies between what is common in itself, which is in the individual, perceived-real things, and what is common when known by us as common. The latter is seen only when several things have been brought together in the relationship of the likeness which each is seen to have with the others (likeness requires several entia between which it circulates). However, it was not known that the real object, which contains what is common, that is, the universal, is composed — as a conceived real thing — of what is real and what is ideal. Both realist systems therefore presented weaknesses enabling them to be easily overthrown.

197. This gave rise to the nominalist system, which went to the opposite extreme. While the first group of realists had stopped at the real thing without noticing the ideal joined to it in the mind, the second group, although equally dismissive of what is ideal, saw in addition that it was impossible to find what is universal and common in what is merely real. For them, therefore, the universal became a name, and nothing more.(229)

198. Abelard belongs to the nominalist camp and undertook to refute both realist schools in the following way.
The school which posited the presence of what is universal in a collection of real things had expressed its thought badly. There is no doubt that it intended to indicate the likeness found in several individuals. The very word collection denotes a finite number of real individuals. On the other hand, what is common is found in all possible individuals, which are numerically indefinite. Abelard, therefore, argued as follows:

These arguments were irrefutable.

199. He goes on to overthrow the second school of realists with the following arguments:

200. Abelard, having overthrown the realists in this way, sees nominalism as the necessary consequence:

201. But Aristotle, too, provided an occasion for nominalism through teaching dialectics rather than logic and, having presented his ideas and arguments in words, explained the connections between them rather than between ideas and arguments. Consequently more attention was given to the material word than to the invisible, spiritual meaning on which Plato's meditation had concentrated. The predicates, therefore, were called 'five words', and philosophers, already confused in explaining universals about which every system presented insurmountable difficulties, ended by reaching out totally for words — like shipwrecked men hanging on to a plank. Words took the place of the very awkward universals which they totally eliminated from philosophy.

202. At this point, Abelard undertakes to demonstrate that a single common name presents no object to the intellect, but can signify more than one object. When the name is then determined by union with other words, it signifies what is particular. But when Abelard comes to ask why common names are imposed on things, he is constrained to return to the likeness of singular things.(238) This likeness, precisely because it is so easy and natural (and thus presupposed and passed over by philosophers) endures hard and solid, like a rock, without any explanation.(239) Nevertheless, like many other 'easy' things, it hides an entire system within itself.

203. Having said this, we must now return to and summarise our argument. According to Aristotle, 1. the one, that which is common (the meaning is more or less the same), is in things (unum in multis); 2. in suitable souls, what is common remains along with what is proper, as occurs in the human soul when it receives impressions of things through sense; 3. the same souls, furnished with such a faculty, pause to think about what is common by abstracting it from what is proper, thus forming an abstract one, that which is common, the universal which is in the soul (unum praeter multa).

This universal reduced to final abstractions is the intellect, that is, the mind, which comes into the soul from without.(240) But because the soul could not acquire this intellect unless it had the faculty for doing so, Aristotle affirms that the soul possesses an intellect in potency (possible intellect) and then acquires from without an intellect in act through its faculty of pausing before and abstracting what is common (acting intellect). Aristotle, therefore, accepts the principle: intellectus in actu est intellectum in actu [the intellect in act is what is understood in act]). This is the whole theory of the soul according to Aristotle. The soul is always an act, a perfection, an entelechy of the body. The mind detaches itself from the soul when knowledge of what is common is lost; the soul acquires a mind when such knowledge is received from sense-data. The soul itself, however, is not divisible from the body.

204. According to this teaching, the soul is not the body but an act of the body; it pertains to the body, is inseparable from the body, wholly existent in potency in that spirit which, according to Aristotle, is found in and develops from the male seed, according to circumstances and in harmony with better organated bodies. This development continues until the soul becomes both the intelligence of the body and what is understood. It does this with an act which is also part of the efficacy proper to a suitable body called by Aristotle more divine. The philosopher, although he calls the soul form, does not really distinguish soul from body. Again, although he calls soul, substance, for him substance is only the final, perfecting act of some given matter which does not receive existence of itself without the matter of which it is the perfection, that is, the entelechy.(241)

Aristotle's error about the nature of the soul consists, therefore, 'in having made what is common come from real things (from the sense, which perceives real things, and from a soul suitable for receiving what is common). He did not rise to a point where he could understand that what is common comes "from somewhere higher"; that what is common is essentially idea and cannot be confused with reality; and that finally everything common is reduced to most common being, naturally intuited by the soul in ideal-being, the objective form of the soul itself.' Consequently, the master of the schools brought natural philosophy to an end in the soul. For him, the soul is 'the last of the natural forms, the termination of natural Philosophy.'(242) In fact, the last of the naturally known forms has to be sought elsewhere. It is IDEAL BEING, object per se, immensely superior to the soul; it is the form which constitutes the natural connection between human beings and their divine principle. The philosopher who wanted to avoid the Platonic error of giving subsistence to ideas fell into the contrary error by confusing ideas with contingent realities, with matter and with the soul. Afraid of an Icharus-like flight, he burrowed underground and closed to all the opening through which alone man can rise securely to the heavens.

Notes

(220) In the first book of Physics, Aristotle says, 'The path that leads us from better known to lesser known things is innate.' He also says that knowledge of conclusions is potentially in the principles. In the first book of Posterior Analytics (lesson 5) he classes direct principles among the things which every student must have when undertaking the study of any branch of knowledge: 'Among those using the principles of reasoning (that is, of direct evidence), everything undemonstrable and necessary for the student if he is to learn anything at all is called a proposition. On the other hand, worthiness is needed in order to teach anyone. Such things are available to students of any branch of knowledge.' St. Thomas comments on this passage: 'If this division is to be clear, we must acknowledge that every proposition whose predicate depends on the reason of the subject (analytical judgment), is direct and per se known, relative to itself. But the terms of certain propositions are such THAT THEY ARE KNOWN TO ALL, LIKE ENS AND ONE AND ANYTHING PERTAINING TO AN ENS AS ENS (I have called these elementary ideas). ENS IS IN FACT THE FIRST CONCEPT OF THE INTELLECT. Hence, such propositions must be considered known not only in themselves, but known per se relative to us. For example, the propositions It is not possible for something to be and not be at the same time and The whole is greater than its part, etc.'

(221) In the first book of Posterior Analytics, Aristotle says that particular knowledge relative to ourselves precedes what is universal, because our knowledge begins from sense. On the other hand, in the first book of Physics, he says that universals are first relative to us, but posterior to their nature. St. Thomas reconciles these two places by noting that in the first book of Posterior Analytics, Aristotle is comparing intellectual with sensible knowledge, placing the latter before the former. But in the first book of Physics, he is comparing two intellective cognitions, one of which is more universal than the other, for example genus and species, making the former chronologically prior to the latter. Thus, according to Aristotle, there would be 1. sensible knowledge; 2. intellective knowledge of very general things; 3. intellective knowledge of less general things.

(222) Poster., bk. 2, text. 104.

(223) Ibid.

(224) The place where Abelard presents this opinion is given in paragraph 178.

(225) NE, vol. 1, 180-187.

(226) 'Some hold a different opinion about the universality of things. When deciding the case, they say that individual things differ not only in form but personally in their essences. What is in one thing, whether matter or form, is not in any way in another, and even when the forms have been removed, things cannot subsist less differently in their essences. Their personal difference, that is, how one thing is not another, is not the result of forms but of the diversity of essence. The forms themselves differ from one another in themselves, otherwise their difference goes on infinitely, because we would have to suppose that some are necessary for the diversity of others. Porphyry noted this kind of difference between what is very general and what is very particular: Neither species nor genus (even the most general or the most special) can expand, as if he meant to say, Their difference is that the essence of one is not the essence of another. Thus, difference of categories results from a difference in essence, not from forms that make the difference. — However, because they wanted all things to be so different that no two things shared the essentially same matter and form, they retained the universality of things, calling universals those things which are indifferently, not essentially, different, as if to say that singular human beings, although different in themselves, are the same in man. In other words, human beings do not differ in human nature: people who according to difference are singular are, according to indifference, that is, according to the coincidence of likeness, universal.'

(227) 'But again there is disagreement. Certain authors, who in no way call Socrates and Plato as such a species, consider only a collection of many things as something universal; all human beings taken together are the species man; similarly, all animals taken together are the genus animal, and so on. Boethius seems to agree with these authors: Species must be understood simply as a thought drawn from the substantial likeness of individuals; genus, as drawn from the likeness of several species. When he speaks of a collected multitude he indicates something drawing many things together. Otherwise they could not predicate anything about many things nor speak of what holds many things in some universal. There would be as many universals as there are singulars.'

(228) 'There are others who go further and say that species is applied not only to a collection of human beings but also to individual human beings as such. When they say that the thing which Socrates is, is predicated of many, they say that they are speaking figuratively, as though many things were the same as him and fit him, and that he is the same as many things. They posit as many species as individuals relative to the number of things, and they do the same with genera. In the case of likeness of natures, however, they designate a smaller number of universals than individuals. Indeed, all human beings are on the one hand many in themselves through difference of person, and on the other, one through likeness of human nature. The same human beings are said to be different from themselves relative to division and likeness. Socrates, for example, as a human being is divided from himself in so far as he is Socrates. Otherwise, the same thing would not be either a genus or a species of itself unless it had some difference relative to itself. Things which are relative must, at least in some respect, be opposites.'

(229) I refuted the nominalists inNE, vol. 1, 134-210. It is extraordinary to see how modern nominalists, like the ancient realists, turn to a collection of individuals to explain what is common. The ancient nominalists however refuted their adversaries by demonstrating very clearly that a collection of individuals is one thing, what is universal or common is another. Cf. my comment about Stewart's error in the reference above.

(230) 'I will first refute the opinion about collection, and examine how the whole collection of human beings, called one species, has to be predicated of many if it is to be universal. — The whole collection however is not used of individuals. If we grant that collection can be predicated of different things through its parts, that is, in so far as its single parts are adapted to themselves, the universal (which has to be entire in singular things according to Boethius) says nothing about the commonalty. In this respect, it is separate from what is common because it is common through parts, as for instance when different parts pertain to different things. In the same way, Socrates would be predicated of many through different parts as though he himself were a universal. Moreover, any number of human beings taken together could fittingly be called universals; the definition of universal and even of species and of what is universal would fit them, so that the whole collection of human beings would include many species'.

(231) 'Similarly we call any collection of bodies and spirits one universal substance. Consequently, because the whole collection of substances is a very general unity, even when one is removed and the rest left, we would have many very general things in the substances.'

(232) 'Likewise we might say that any collection of bodies and spirits is one universal substance, so that while one whole collection is one most general thing, we would have most general things in substances if we were to choose one and leave the rest. — It may perhaps be objected that no collection which may be included in something very general is something very general. I again reply: a residual collection separated from substances may not be something very general, but if the universal substance remains, the collection must be a species of the substance and have a co-equal species under the same genus. But what substance can be opposed to it, since the species of the substance is truly contained in it and communicates in the same genus with the individual substance, as a rational animal, a mortal animal?'

(233) 'Furthermore, every universal is naturally prior to its own individuals. But a collection of anything is the whole, integral thing relative to the individuals composing it and is naturally posterior to the things composing it. Again, Boethius assigns this difference between what is whole and universal to divisions, because a part is not the same as the whole, whereas a species is always the same as the genus. Indeed, how could the whole collection of human beings ever be a multitude of animals?'

(234) 'We must now refute those who give the name universal to individual things in so far as they can apply to other things and, as our opponents grant, be predicated of many things, not because the former are essentially many, but because they apply to many things. If being predicated of many things is the same as being applicable to many things, how do we say that an individual is predicated of one thing only, when there is nothing which is applicable to one thing alone? Moreover, how does being predicated of many things differentiate between what is universal and what is individual when human being applies in exactly the same way to Socrates as it does to many? Man, as man, is man; Socrates, as man, is the same as the rest. But neither man as Socrates, nor Socrates applies to others. Whatever man has, Socrates has, and in the same way.'

(235) 'Moreover, when it is granted that something is truly identical, for example, man in Socrates is Socrates himself, there is no difference between the two. Nothing is simultaneously different from itself; whatever it has in itself, it has in exactly the same way. Socrates, who is white and a grammarian, although he has different things in himself, is not different from himself because of them; he possesses both things and in exactly the same way. He is not a grammarian different from himself in one way and white in another, just as he is not white different from himself in one way and a grammarian in another.'

(236) 'Their statement that Socrates coincides with Plato is acceptable about anyone since all human beings clearly differ from each other both in matter and form. If Socrates in his reality as human being coincides with Plato, nothing else is man except Socrates and the other. Socrates himself must coincide with Plato; he must coincide with himself and the other. But in himself he is quite different from the other, and the same is true of the other; Socrates is not the other. — But some take the phrase to coincide in man in a negative sense, as if they said, As a man, Socrates does not differ from Plato. But we can also say that Socrates does not differ from him as a stone because neither is a stone. So there is no greater coincidence in their being man than in their being stone. Unless perhaps a certain proposition is put first as in the following case: Let man be such that he does not differ in man. But even this is impossible because it is totally false that they do not differ in man. For if Socrates does not differ from Plato in the reality which is man, he does not differ in himself. For if he differs in himself from the other, and he himself is the reality which is man, then he differs from him in the reality which is man.'

(237) It is said that nominalism developed in the 11th century, when ecclesiastical society first, and then civil society flourished anew. John the Sophist, doctor to Henry I, king of France (AD 1060), is considered the author of nominalism. It is said that his disciple was John Roscelin (also known as Rosselin, Russelin, Rocelin, Rucellin), whose works were condemned by the Council of Soissons (AD 1092). Another disciple was Abelard, whose works were proscribed by the Council of Sens (AD 1140). Tennemann, in his Manuale, presents the debate between realists and nominalists in his study of Porphyry's Libro delle cinque voci. Porphyry (d. 304) asks some questions about genera and species: 'Do they subsist? Are they solely in intellectual things? Are they corporeal or incorporeal subsistences? Are they found in sensible or insensible things?' Porphyry says that he does not wish to discuss these questions because of their great difficulty. However, they all have their source in Aristotle's unum in multis and unum praeter multa. Aristotle, in turn, was simply discussing a controversy which had greatly occupied philosophers who had preceded him.

(238) 'The word man names singulars also from what causes them to be men. Hence, man is said to be a universal; it has a common, not proper, sense pertaining to singulars, whose common likeness was conceived by it.'

(239) NE, vol. 1, 180-187.

(240) In his classification of habitual cognitions, Aristotle posits systematic knowledge and intellect at the highest level. He places intellect, which for him consists in the cognition of principles, above systematic knowledge: 'Systematic knowledge and intellect are always true. But there is no kind of knowledge more certain than the intellect. But because the principles of proofs are the best known of all, and all systematic knowledge proceeds by way of argument, systematic knowledge will not be concerned with principles. The intellect however will be concerned with principles because it is the only thing truer than systematic knowledge.' He concludes, 'The intellect therefore is the principle of systematic knowledge' (Posterior Analytics, bk. 2). Elsewhere he says that the intellect is the species of species, that is, the most abstract idea of all ideas (being in general) (De Anima, bk. 3, text. 38); and he always considers the acting intellect as final. Hence, for him, it is acquired from outside.

Abelard acknowledges that Aristotle confused the intellect with its object; he also mentions a group of philosophers of his own time who embraced the same opinion, which he refutes. He first states very acutely (it is a remarkable distinction for the 12th century) that 'just as SENSE is not the FELT THING to which sense is directed, so THE INTELLECT is not the FORM OF THE THING conceived. The intellect is a certain ACTION of the soul, which is therefore called intelligent. But the form to which it is directed is some imaginary, fictitious thing' (here he reveals simultaneously sensism and nominalism hand in hand) 'produced by the soul, when and how it likes.' He then adds, 'Certain thinkers CALL IT (that is, the form of a thing, the idea and, according to Abelard, the image) THE VERY THING WHICH IS UNDERSTOOD. For example, when I think about a tower which I cannot see at the moment, I see' (in my imagination) 'and contemplate its height and shape, and presence in a spacious field. This is the very thing they call the understanding of the tower.' He also adds that Aristotle agreed with this class of philosophers: 'It seems that Aristotle agreed with these thinkers: THE PASSIONS OF THE SOUL, WHICH HE ATTRIBUTES TO THE INTELLECT, HE CALLS LIKENESSES OF THINGS in the Peri hermeneias.' Cf. Libro delle cinque voci, cited above.

(241) Cicero explained Aristotle's opinion about the nature of the soul as follows: 'Because those four known genera are the complex of principles, from which all things originate, he thinks the fifth is a nature from which the mind comes. According to him, such things as thinking, foreseeing, discerning, teaching, finding something out, memorising so many different things, loving, hating, desiring, fearing, being distressed, rejoicing, are not contained in any of the four genera. He opts for a fifth kind and gives the spirit itself a new name, entelechy, as if it were continuous, perennial motion' (Tusc., bk. 1, c. 10). This fifth essence is heat or the vital principle which, according to Aristotle, is in the male seed; also in this vital principle is nature, that is, an active principle tending to development. But, as we have seen, as long as this fifth element has not taken any step towards its development, it is called only a soul in potency (a virtual soul).

Its stages of development are those of vegetating, feeling and understanding. Thus it successively becomes a vegetable soul (and only virtually a sensitive and intellective soul), then a sensitive soul (and virtually an intellective soul), and finally an intellective soul to which comes the mind or intellect in act, or acting intellect, that is, one from outside. Cicero, however, in attributing to the mind all the actions he listed, did not faithfully present Aristotle's opinion. Lambinus noted that Cicero interpreted entelechy badly by understanding it as continuous motion when he should have taken it as force, the cause of motion. Davisius contradicts Lambinus, as though Lambinus had attributed motion to the soul — something which Aristotle denies, as Justin Martyr (Cohort. ad Graec.) and Macrobius (In Somn. Scip., bk. 2, c. 14) attest. According to Macrobius: 'Aristotle does not agree. He asserts not only that the soul does not move of itself but does not even try to move.' In Macrobius's view, entelechy for Aristotle means form alone. To prove this, Macrobius calls on the testimony of Aeneas of Gaza (In Theophr., p. 376), Nemesius (De N. H., p. 41, and De Anima, bk. 2, c. 1) and Chalcidius (In Tim. Plat., p. 3 10 ss.). But Davisius and Lambinus can be reconciled, because form itself is a force or energy. In my opinion, Plutarch unifies the two meanings of Aristotelian entelechy as follows: 'Aristotle (said that the soul) is the entelechy first of the physical, organic body which potentially has life. Entelechy must be understood as energy (or force)' (De Placit., bk. 4, c. 2). Corsini, who explains act and perfection, is also on target, because form is act, perfection, force: all of these things together.

(242) Physic., bk. 2, text. 26; St. T., S.T., I, q. 76, art. 1, ad 3 [1].