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Ockham was indeed one of the auxiliaries of Philip the Fair in his struggle with the Holy See, suffered excommunication, and sought refuge with the Duke of Bavaria, the foe of the Pope. But nominalism always gained ground, having among other celebrated champions, Peter d'Ailly and Buridan; the one succeeded in becoming Chancellor of the University of Paris, the other in becoming its Rector.
All our words for other than material objects are metaphors, liable to be misunderstood a proposition which he confirms from Horne Tooke's nominalism. All our knowledge, again, supposes memory which is fallible. All our anticipations assume the 'uniformity of nature, which cannot be proved.
The psychology of nominalism is undoubtedly right where it insists that every image is particular and every term, in its existential aspect, a flatum vocis; but nominalists should have recognised that images may have any degree of vagueness and generality when measured by a conceptual standard.
I do not suppose that the teacher would accept all the deductions of his follower. Fitzjames, in fact, found in the 'Science of Thought' a scientific exposition of the nominalism which he had more or less consciously accepted from Hobbes or Horne Tooke. Max Müller, he says, in a letter, has been knocking out the bottom of all speculative theology and philosophy.
To Anglo-Saxons, reared in a land blessed by direct government of the people, by the people, and for the people, such methods were not only needless but obnoxious. Nominal responsibility without real power has been seen to breed numberless evils. We have learned to hate all nominalism, all fiction in government, in business and, above all, in personal character.
His fame as an exponent of metaphysic attracted many hearers who did not usually go much to church, and they were accustomed then as later to say that here was a Christian who knew enough about the problems of thought to make his testimony worth hearing. Others, who cared not a rap for Personality or Causation, Realism or Nominalism, were attracted by his grace, his eloquence, his literary charm.
It is impossible to follow out the details of this interesting opposition, so we shall only attempt to distinguish in a rough way the beginnings of the new from the remnants of the old. This last position, indeed, is limited by the lingering influence of nominalism, which holds the concepts of the mind to be merely abstract copies, and not archetypes of things.
For this method of forming conceptions is the only one which nominalism can accept with a good conscience. The fact that in so doing it is led ad absurdum has only quite lately occurred to it.
A Church which depends for its strength and prestige on the iron discipline of a centralised autocracy, and on the fanatical devotion of soldiers who know no duty except obedience, no cause except the interests of their society, can make no terms with the disintegrating nominalism, the uncertain subjectivism, of a mind like Newman's.
Nominalism, in its denial of reality to general notions, undermined the Catholic idea of the Church: in its recognition of none except individuals it destroyed the whole conception of the solidarity of original sin; while those of its professors who allowed no existence of their own to the parts of an individual whole, resolved the Trinity into three Gods.
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