he is exhorting the beatific infant to the exercise of the faculty of comparison.
§ 44. That a common term implies comparison does not need to be insisted upon. It is because things resemble each other in certain of their attributes that we call them by a common name, and this resemblance could not be ascertained except by comparison, at some time and by some one. Thus a common term, or concept, is the compressed result of an indefinite number of comparisons, which lie wrapped up in it like so many fossils, witnessing to prior ages of thought.
§ 45. In the next product of thought, namely, the proposition, we have the result of a single act of comparison between two terms; and this is why the proposition is called the unit of thought, as being the simplest and most direct result of comparison.
§ 46. In the third product of thought, namely, the inference, we have a comparison of propositions either directly or by means of a third. This will be explained later on. For the present we return to the first product of thought.
§ 47. The nature of singular terms has not given rise to much dispute; but the nature of common terms has been the great battle-ground of logicians. What corresponds to a singular term is easy to determine, for the thing of which it is a name is there to point to: but the meaning of a common term, like 'man' or 'horse,' is not so obvious as people are apt to think on first hearing of the question.
§ 48. A common term or class-name was known to mediæval 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.