The result of my system will be, to show, that, so far from the world being
a goddess in petticoats, it is rather the Devil in a strait waistcoat.
* * * * *
The controversy of the Nominalists and Realists was one of the greatest and
most important that ever occupied the human mind. They were both right, and
both wrong. They each maintained opposite poles of the same truth; which
truth neither of them saw, for want of a higher premiss. Duns Scotus was
the head of the Realists; Ockham,[1] his own disciple, of the Nominalists.
Ockham, though certainly very prolix, is a most extraordinary writer.
[Footnote 1:
John Duns Scotus was born in 1274, at Dunstone in the parish of Emildune,
near Alnwick. He was a fellow of Merton College, and Professor of Divinity
at Oxford. After acquiring an uncommon reputation at his own university, he
went to Paris, and thence to Cologne, and there died in 1308, at the early
age of thirty-four years. He was called the Subtle Doctor, and found time
to compose works which now fill twelve volumes in folio. See the Lyons
edition, by Luke Wadding, in 1639.
William Ockham was an Englishman, and died about 1347; but the place and
year of his birth are not clearly ascertained. He was styled the Invincible
Doctor, and wrote bitterly against Pope John XXII. We all remember Butler's
account of these worthies:--
"He knew what's what, and that's as high
As metaphysic wit can fly;
In school divinity as able
As he that hight Irrefragable,
A second Thomas, or at once
To name them all, another _Dunse_;
Profound in all the Nominal
And Real ways beyond them all;
For he a rope of sand could twist
As tough as learned Sorbonist."
HUDIBRAS. Part I. Canto I. v. 149.
The Irrefragable Doctor was Alexander Hales, a native of Gloucestershire,
who died in 1245. Amongst his pupils at Paris, was Fidanza, better known by
the name of Bonaventura, the Seraphic Doctor. The controversy of the
Realists and the Nominalists cannot he explained in a note; but in
substance the original point of dispute may be thus stated. The Realists
held _generally_ with Aristotle, that there were universal _ideas_ or
essences impressed upon matter, and covëal with, and inherent in, their
objects. Plato held that these universal forms existed as exemplars in the
divine mind previously to, and independently of, matter; but both
maintained, under one shape or other, the real existence of universal
forms. On the other hand, Zeno and the old Stoics denied the existence of
these universals, and contended that they were no more than mere tenms and
nominal representatives of their particular objects. The Nominalists were
the followers of Zeno, and held that universal forms are merely modes of
conception, and exist solely in and for the mind. It does not require much
reflection to see how great an influence these different systems might have
upon the enunciation of the higher doctrines of Christianity.--ED.]
* * * * *
It is remarkable, that two thirds of the eminent schoolmen were of British
birth. It was the schoolmen who made the languages of Europe what they now
are. We laugh at the quiddities of those writers now, but, in truth, these
quiddities are just the parts of their language which we have rejected;
whilst we never think of the mass which we have adopted, and have in daily
use.
* * * * *
One of the scholastic definitions of God is this,--_Deus est, cui omne quod
est est esse omne quod est:_ as long a sentence made up of as few words,
and those as oligosyllabic, as any I remember. By the by, that
_oligosyllabic_ is a word happily illustrative of its own meaning, _ex
opposito_.
* * * * *
Spinosa, at the very end of his life, seems to have gained a glimpse of the
truth. In the last letter published in his works, it appears that he began
to suspect his premiss. His _unica substantia_ is, in fact, a mere notion,
--a _subject_ of the mind, and no _object_ at all.
* * * * *
Plato's works are preparatory exercises for the mind. He leads you to see,
that propositions involving in themselves contradictory conceptions, are
nevertheless true; and which, therefore, must belong to a higher logic--
that of ideas. They are contradictory only in the Aristotelian logic, which
is the instrument of the understanding. I have read most of the works of
Plato several times with profound attention, but not all his writings. In
fact, I soon found that I had read Plato by anticipation. He was a
consummate genius.[1]
[Footnote 1:
"This is the test and character of a truth so affirmed (--a truth of the
reason, an Idea)--that in its own proper form it is _inconceivable_. For to
_conceive_, is a function of the understanding, which can he exercised only
on subjects subordinate thereto. And yet to the forms of the understanding
all truth must be reduced, that is to be fixed as an object of reflection,
and to be rendered _expressible_. And here we have a second test and sign
of a truth so affirmed, that it can come forth out of the moulds of the
understanding only in the disguise of two contradictory conceptions, each
of which is partially true, and the conjunction of both conceptions becomes
the representative or _expression_ (--the _exponent_) of a truth beyond
conception and inexpressible. Examples: _before_ Abraham WAS, I AM. God is
a circle, the centre of which is every where, and the circumference no
where. The soul is all in every part." Aids to Reflection, n. 224.n. See
also _Church and State_, p. 12.--ED.]
* * * * *
My mind is in a state of philosophical doubt as to animal magnetism. Von
Spix, the eminent naturalist, makes no doubt of the matter, and talks
coolly of giving doses of it. The torpedo affects a third or external
object, by an exertion of its own will: such a power is not properly
electrical; for electricity acts invariably under the same circumstances. A
steady gaze will make many persons of fair complexions blush deeply.
Account for that. [1]
[Footnote 1:
I find the following remarkable passage in p. 301. vol. i. of the richly
annotated copy of Mr. Southey's Life of Wesley, which Mr. C. bequeathed as
his "darling book and the favourite of his library" to its great and
honoured author and donor:--
"The coincidence throughout of all these Methodist cases with those of the
Magnetists makes me wish for a solution that would apply to all. Now this
sense or appearance of a sense of the distant, both in time and space, is
common to almost all the _magnetic_ patients in Denmark, Germany, France,
and North Italy, to many of whom the same or a similar solution could not
apply. Likewise, many cases have been recorded at the same time, in
different countries, by men who had never heard of each other's names, and
where the simultaneity of publication proves the independence of the
testimony. And among the Magnetisers and Attesters are to be found names of
men, whose competence in respect of integrity and incapability of
intentional falsehood is fully equal to that of Wesley, and their
competence in respect of physio- and psychological insight and attainments
incomparably greater. Who would dream, indeed, of comparing Wesley with a
Cuvier, Hufeland, Blumenbach, Eschenmeyer, Reil, &c.? Were I asked, what
_I_ think, my answer would be,--that the evidence enforces scepticism and a
_non liquet_;--too strong and consentaneous for a candid mind to be
satisfied of its falsehood, or its solvibility on the supposition of
imposture or casual coincidence;--too fugacious and unfixable to support
any theory that supposes the always potential, and, under certain
conditions and circumstances, occasionally active, existence of a
correspondent faculty in the human soul. And nothing less than such an
hypothesis would be adequate to the _satisfactory_ explanation of the
facts;--though that of a _metastasis_ of specific functions of the nervous
energy, taken in conjunction with extreme nervous excitement, _plus_ some
delusion, _plus_ some illusion, _plus_ some imposition, _plus_ some chance
and accidental coincidence, might determine the direction in which the
scepticism should vibrate. Nine years has the subject of Zoo-magnetism been
before me. I have traced it historically, collected a mass of documents in
French, German, Italian, and the Latinists of the sixteenth century, have
never neglected an opportunity of questioning eye-witnesses, _ex. gr._
Tieck, Treviranus, De Prati, Meyer, and others of literary or medical
celebrity, and I remain where I was, and where the first perusal of Klug's
work had left me, without having moved an inch backward or forward. The
reply of Treviranus, the famous botanist, to me, when he was in London, is
worth recording:--'Ich habe gesehen was (ich weiss das) ich nicht würde
geglaubt haben auf _ihren_ erzählung,' &c. 'I have seen what I am certain I
would not have believed on your telling; and in all reason, therefore, I
can neither expect nor wish that you should believe on _mine_.'"--ED.]
_May_ 1. 1830.