RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Occam
those dealing with the power of the pope and clergy and with the authority and rights of the emperor. External reasons probably determined the publication of the work in its incomplete form, and the impulse to take it up again was lacking later. Wadding names a number of other works as Occam's but it is impossible in the present state of knowledge to determine whether they exist, and if so whether they are genuine or perhaps parts of those already known.
III. Occam's Position: A complete critical edition of Occam is much to be desired. He was not only one of the most wide-awake scholars of the Middle Ages but a personality of striking consistency and boldness. His life was a tragedy; he was not able to procure the triumph of his most cherished ideals — he was bereft of one friend after another, and the vacillating policy of the emperor was little consolation to him. And yet the lonely friar was one of the mighty forces of his time. His historical importance rests on three achievements in particular; he carried the banner of nominalism to victory in the philosophy of his age; he encouraged the critical spirit in regard to traditional dogma, and taught men how to use it as a counterpoise to ecclesiastical positivism; and he struck out a new line of thought as to the relations of temporal and spiritual authority of Church and State.
The great revival of philosophical and theological study which the thirteenth century witnessed was conditioned by the influence of Aristotle. The theory of the universe propounded by the i. His Stagirite had to be reconciled with the
Nominal- traditional Platonic-Augustinian realism, ism. This Thomas Aquinas undertook to do, following Aristotle as closely as possible. Duns Scotus, on the other hand, attempted to maintain the ancient realism, while supporting it by modern or Aristotelian methods. Interests and tendencies, however, came up in his work which drove his disciples away from his position. The growth of empirical research and psychological analysis on one side, together with the new activity of the reason in the epistemological field, and on the other the recognition of the fact that the specific and the particular was the end of nature, led to results widely divergent from those of Scotus. Here was Occam's work ready to his hand. He was the leader of the nominalists, the founder of the " modern '' school. Science has to do, he maintains, only with propositions, not with things as such, since the object of science is not what is but what is known. Things, too, are always singular, while science has to do with general concepts, which as such exist only in the human mind. Scotus had deduced the objective existence of universals from the concepts originated under the operation of the objects. Occam, on the other hand, asserts that " no universal is a substance existing outside of the mind," and proves it by a variety of keen logical reasons. He rejects even the milder forms of philosophic universalism, such as the theory that the universal is something in particulars which is distinguished from them not realiter but only formaliter. In fine, he considers the universal without qualification as an " inten-
tion " of the mind, a symbol representing conventionally several objects. In respect of the theory of cognition, where Duns Scotus had placed between the perceiving subject and the object perceived a " sensible species " and an " intelligible species," Occam considers these as superfluous machinery. Objects call forth sense-impressions in us, which are transmuted by the active intellect into mental images; these are thus a product of the intellect, not species which flow from the object into the intellectus possibilis. The reality of these images is thus, in the modern use of the terms, not objective but subjective. This is true not merely of the " terms of first intention " formed directly from sense-impression, but also of the " terms of second intention," i.e., the abstract terms which take note of common attributes, or universals. These latter correspond to a tendency of the human mind, which can not perceive individuals without at the same time attempting to form a general concept. A white object simultaneously suggests abstract whiteness; an extended, related, enduring object forces the conception of extension, relation, duration. The result of this line of reasoning is the absolute subjectivity of all concepts and universals and the limitation of knowledge to the mind and its concepts — although these are real entities because of their subjective existence in the mind, reproducing the actual according to the constitution of the mind. Thus Occam is really the pioneer of modern epistemology. The mysterious universals with their species in the sense of objective realities are abolished. Objects work upon the senses of men, and out of these operations the active intellect frames its concepts, including the so-called universals, which, while they are in themselves subjective, yet correspond to objective realities. By the statement that science has nothing to do directly with things, but only with concepts of them, the theory of knowledge assumes vital import for the progress of science, and a new method of scientific cognition is made available. Of course this increases the difficulty of the task of theology; but Occam was essentially of a critical and negative temperament, of great critical acumen but (especially in the religious province) by no means equally great in constructive ability. He had not the broad general conception of religion which guided his master Scotus through all his perilous attempts to criticize the old evidences and bring up new ones; where he shows its power at all, it is usually simply borrowed from Scotus.
According to his attitude toward the dogmas of the Church, it appears that " authority, reason, and experience " are the sources of religious knowledge. A scientific proof of dogma is 2. Doctrine impossible. This he shows by the of the method of evolving a number of prop- Church and ositions which on ecclesiastical princi- Criticism. pies ought to be possible, but actually contradict the doctrine of the Church. The instances are frequently rather startling; but it would be quite misleading to understand them in the sense of anti-ecclesiastical unbelief or frivolous skepticism. Occam's purpose is to show that reason is useless as a foundation of ecclesiastical
Occam