employ unsuspiciously ill reasoning and conversation.
I'.ut is this all? Is this a complete solution of the enig- ma? Is it not a mere screen which t ceals the real
enigma from its? There is a general, not an individual. resemblance between all men- homo simillimus komini nihil similius komini quam homo. They are alike in consequence of their participation in a common human- ity. Our knowledge of this humanity may be — must he— derived by generalization from the common char- acteristics of all men. But, again, it should be asked, Is this all? Does our knowledge precede or follow this possession of a common humanity? Doe- it do any- thing more than recognise its presence? How does the common humanity come into existence? How does it continue in existence? How i- it to he interpreted? Is there no plan or order in creation? No eternal de- sign in the purposes of the Creator? Is everything spasmodical, momentary creation, with observance of antecedent forms? Whence, then, such observance, and the maintenance id' uniformity, and all the charac- teristics of preordination? How does it occur that the earth proceed- ever to "bring forth the living creature nj'h r lti< kin, I. cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth afU r his kin!." if the several kinds and genera and species are mere abstractions, pure figments of the generalizing faculty? Did (his unvarying observance of the type arise, without any reality of the type, by the accidental collision of atoms in all the infinite vari- ety of their hypothetical contacts, and by survival of t he fittest, through self-adaptation to their shifting sur- roundings? No permanent forms, transmitted from generation to generation, from age to age, could thus he maintained. The unmitigated repudiati f Real- ism leads straight to the acceptance of the creed i i Lu- cretius and Darwin and Herbert Spencer. " Nam certe neqne consilio Primordia rernm Ordinl se quaeqne, ntque sagaci mente locarnut : Nee qnos qnaeque darent molus pepigere profecto ; Sed quia multiinodis, inulti-. mntata, per Omne K\ iiit'uiiio vexantur percita plagis, omne -elms motus, el i oetus experinndo,
Tandem devenient in talc,- d;s;,o-,t,iras,
Qualibus baec I'dei- con -:-:.: -mum ,
El nuiltos etinm magnos sen ata pei ni
i ; -. ■mei iii motus coujecta 'at convet The answer of the Epicurean herd will not solve the riddles proposed. Realism offered a very different so- lution, which, however inadequate and unsatisfactory it may be deemed, did not affect to treat the questions as -hallow or unimportant. Bul may there not be some genuine truth, obscured, disguised, mutilated, lame yet, nevertheless, struggling into meaning, in the the- ory of Realism? I- there not a plan, a divine order, throughout all creation? Are there not type- intelli- gible, potential, not actual types -to he accounted for?
Has a concepti fth< reason uever varying, but per-
REALISM
943
REAPING
sisting as long as the reason and the objects of reason endure — has such a conception a less real existence than the concrete and material, or individual forms which correspond to the conception, but which are changing at all times during their existence, and are born to perish ? The existence is of very different char- acter, but is it less truly existence? The ambiguity and vagueness of their terms may not have been recog- nised by the mediaeval Idealists and Realists. Are they always clearly apprehended by their critics? Have the censors of Realism fully appreciated the incompre- hensibility and variability of the Realist doctrine with- out loss of its distinctive character and without sacri- fice of its essential tenet? Doubtless the theory of Realism was indistinct, not rigorously determined, and scarcely palpable. Doubtless the modes of its state- ment were obnoxious to grave exceptions, and led to misapprehensions and misconceptions on the part even of its advocates. The subjects with which the theory dealt may very well lie beyond any determinate grasp of the human faculties. But an earnest effort was made to interpret the great, mysteries of existence — the per- manence of type, with the variability and fragility of all embodiments of the type. This world may be "all a fleeting show, for man's illusion given ;" but is there nothing unseen behind it which is true, and which fur- nishes its unalterable patterns? There is some justifi- cation, or at least some elucidation, of the thesis of the Realists to be deduced from the conclusions of compara- tive anatomy. Aristotle taught that the skeletons of the beast, the bird, and the fish revealed a common type, with characteristic deviations {De Part. Animal.). Six centuries later. Lactantius, or the Pseudo-Lactantius, re- produced the same tenet in a remarkable passage : "Una dispositio, et unus habitus, innumerabiles imaginis pra> ferat varietates" {De Opific. Dei, c. vii). In our own day, the distinguished comparative anatomist Owen has demonstrated the validity of the conjecture of Aristotle by his work On the A rchetypal Skeleton of Vertebrate Animals; and Dr. M'Cosh has given, perhaps without full recognition of its import, a most instructive appli- cation of the principle in his Typical Forms and Special- Ends in Creation. Is there no truth, no validity, no reality in the types?
Is Realism, then, to be regarded as true? By no means. It only contains an element, an unsegregated element, of truth. It is a very important element, but it is dimly entertained and extravagantly expressed. Is its opposite, Nominalism, true? Again the answer must be, By no means. It contemplates only one side of the truth; runs into equal extravagance, and ex- cludes utterly the indispensable particle of truth con- tained in the adverse doctrine. Is the truth attained by combining the antagonistic views? Not so. The two schemes cannot be united, and can scarcely be rec- onciled, except by regarding them as imperfect exposi- tions from opposite points of view. Moreover, two par- tial and fragmentary truths can never make the whole truth. Truth is a consistent, harmonious, organic whole. It can never be attained by dovetailing patches of truth, or by forming a mosaic.