people are apt to think on first hearing of the question.

48. A common term or class-name was known to mediaeval logicians
under the title of a Universal; and it was on the question 'What is a
Universal 7' that they split into the three schools of Realists,
Nominalists, and Conceptualists. Here are the answers of the three
schools to this question in their most exaggerated form--

49. Universals, said the Realists, are substances having an
independent existence in nature.

50. Universals, said the Nominalists, are a mere matter of words,
the members of what we call a class having nothing in common but the
name.

51. Universals, said the Conceptualists, exist in the mind alone,
They are the conceptions under which the mind regards external
objects.

52. The origin of pure Realism is due to Plato and his doctrine of
'ideas'; for Idealism, in this sense, is not opposed to Realism, but
identical with it. Plato seems to have imagined that, as there was a
really existing thing corresponding to a singular term, such as
Socrates, so there must be a really existing thing corresponding to
the common term 'man.' But when once the existence of these general
objects is admitted, they swamp all other existences. For individual
men are fleeting and transitory--subject to growth, decay and
death--whereas the idea of man is imperishable and eternal. It is only
by partaking in the nature of these ideas that individual objects
exist at all.