and in which the combatants, having spent at last their whole stock
of dialectic ammunition, resorted to carnal weapons, passing suddenly,
by a very illogical _metabasis_, from "universals" to particulars.
Both parties appealed to Aristotle. By a singular fortune, a pagan
philosopher, introduced into Western Europe by Mohammedans, became
the supreme authority of the Christian world. Aristotle was the
Scripture of the Middle Age. Luther found this authority in his way
and disposed of it in short order, devoting Aristotle without
ceremony to the Devil, as "a damned mischief-making heathen." But
Leibnitz, whose large discourse looked before as well as after,
reinstated not only Aristotle, but Plato, and others of the Greek
philosophers, in their former repute;--"Car ces anciens," he said,
"etaient plus solides qu'on ne croit." He was the first to turn the
tide of popular opinion in their favor.

Not without a struggle was he brought to side with the Nominalists.
Musing, when a boy, in the Rosenthal, near Leipzig, he debated long
with himself,--"Whether he would give up the Substantial Forms of
the Schoolmen." Strange matter for boyish deliberation! Yes, good
youth, by all means, give them up! They have had their day. They
served to amuse the imprisoned intellect of Christendom in times of
ecclesiastical thraldom, when learning knew no other vocation. But
the age into which you are born has its own problems, of nearer
interest and more commanding import. The measuring-reed of science
is to be laid to the heavens, the solar system is to be weighed in a
balance; the age of logical quiddities has passed, the age of
mathematical quantities has come. Give them up! You will soon have
enough to do to take care of your own. What with Dynamics and
Infinitesimals, Pasigraphy and Dyadik, Monads and Majesties,
Concilium AEgyptiacum and Spanish Succession and Hanoverian cabals,