§ 53. Pure Nominalism was the swing of the pendulum of thought to the very opposite extreme; while Conceptualism was an attempt to hit the happy mean between the two.
§ 54. Roughly it may be said that the Realists sought for the answer to the question 'What is a Universal?' in the matter of thought, the Conceptualists in the form, and the Nominalists in the expression.
§ 55. A full answer to the question 'What is a Universal?' will bring in something of the three views above given, while avoiding the exaggeration of each. A Universal is a number of things that are called by the same name; but they would not be called by the same name unless they fell under the same conception in the mind; nor would they fall under the same conception in the mind unless there actually existed similar attributes in the several members of a class, causing us to regard them under the same conception and to give them the same name. Universals therefore do exist in nature, and not merely in the mind of man: but their existence is dependent upon individual objects, instead of individual objects depending for their existence upon them. Aristotle saw this very clearly, and marked the distinction between the objects corresponding to the singular and to the common term by calling the former Primary and the latter Secondary Existences. Rosinante and Excalibur are primary, but 'horse' and 'sword' secondary existences.
§ 56. We have seen that the three products of thought are each one stage in advance of the other, the inference being built upon the proposition, as the proposition is built upon the term. Logic therefore naturally divides itself into three parts.
The First Part of Logic deals with the Term;
The Second Part deals with the Proposition;
The Third Part deals with the Inference.
PART I.—OF TERMS.
CHAPTER 1.
Of the Term as distinguished from other words.
§ 57. The word 'term' means a boundary.
§ 58. The subject and predicate are the two terms, or boundaries, of a proposition. In a proposition we start from a subject and end in a predicate (§§ 182-4), there being nothing intermediate between the two except the act of pronouncing as to their agreement or disagreement, which is registered externally under the sign of the copula. Thus the subject is the 'terminus a quo,' and the predicate is the 'terminus ad quem.'