REALISTS; NOMINALISTS; CONCEPTUALISTS.--It was in the time of
St. Anselm that there arose the celebrated philosophic quarrel between the
"realists, nominalists, and conceptualists." It is here essential to employ
these technical terms or else not to allude to the dispute at all, because
the strife is above all a war of words. The realists (of whom St. Anselm
was one), said: "The ideas (idea of virtue, idea of sin, idea of greatness,
idea of littleness) are realities; they exist, in a spiritual manner of
course, but they really exist; they are: there is a virtue, a sin, a
greatness, a littleness, a reason, etc. (and this was an exact reminiscence
of the ideas of Plato). It is indeed only the idea, the general, the
universal, which is real, and the particular has only the appearance of
reality. Men do not exist, the individual man does not exist; what exists
is 'man' in general, and individual men are only the appearance of--the
coloured reflections of--the universal man." The nominalists (Roscelin the
Canon of Compiegne, for instance) answered: "No; the general ideas, the
universals as you say, are only names, are only words, emissions of the
voice, labels, if you like, which we place on such and such categories of
facts observed by us; there is no greatness; there are a certain number of
great things, and when we think of them we inscribe this word 'greatness'
on the general idea which we conceive. 'Man' does not exist; there are men
and the word humanity is only a word which to us represents a collective
idea."

Why did the realists cling so to their universals, held to be realities and
the sole realities? For many reasons. If the individual alone be real,
there are not three Persons in the Godhead, there are three Gods and the
unity of God is not real, it is only a word, and God is not real, He is
only an utterance of the voice. If the individual is not real, the Church
is not real; she does not exist, there only exist Christians who possess