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brought to an issue by asking, What does it designate? In an obscure form the controversy was included in the "ideas" of Plato, those intellectual prototypes of classes. Plato putting the constructive force of mind in the foremost position conceived of individuals as only the variable expression of a controlling idea; as the Madonnas of Raphael of a conception in the mind of the artist more perfect than any one of them. Aristotle, more empirical in his bent of mind, did not accept the idea as preceding the individual, but as found in it. He explained things from the position of the critic rather than of the artist. In the scholastic period this discussion gathered heat, both because of its own subtility, and because of its relation to doctrines such as the trinity and headship in Adam. It developed three leading opinions, with minor shades of difference under them. The realists, at first the more prevalent class, asserted that the generic name expressed real generic being, of which individuals are variable manifestations. Thus the same water reappears in many different waves. The nominalists, whose earliest representative was Roscelin, and ablest representative was Occam, affirmed that we have in classes only words and individuals. The conceptualists declared that we have the general word, the conception back of this word, and the individual things grouped under it. Though the controversy lingers to our time, the nominalists and conceptualists prevail. The empirical school inclines to the first opinion, and the intuitional school to the second. The reasons are obvious.

The empiricist works up his mental facts out of the impressions of things. Imagination, on its passive side, is a supreme fact with him. Things repeat their impressions, and these impressions grouped by association become the substance of knowledge. The common noun is simply a word backed by many images instead of by one image.