a town of Mexico, department of Durango, and 45 miles S.S.E. of the town of that name. In the vicinity there are rich silver mines; but the principal resources of the place are derived from the sale of a liquor called mezcal, distilled from the aloe. Pop. 7000.

NOMINALISTS and REALISTS, two opposing sects among the scholastic philosophers, celebrated for the bitter and even bloody hostility with which they maintained their disputes. The contest turned upon the nature of general terms, or universals. While both parties agreed that the object of the science of logic was universals, they differed upon the grand question as to whether these universals were real things or mere names. One party espoused the latter opinion, and went by the name of Nominalists; the other adopted the former view, and received the name of Realists. The Nominalist cited Aristotle in behalf of his position; the Realist adduced Plato in favour of his. It becomes therefore necessary, in order to get to the root of this famous controversy, to advert to the doctrines of those ancient masters respecting common notions or ideas. According to the opinion of Plato, common terms, as representative of the actual and eternal ideas of the Divine mind, according to which all particular existences are formed, have a real, permanent existence. The partial exponents of these ideas, as manifested in individuals, he held to be unreal and illusory; and that the only proper realities were those general notions or ideas denoted by the term universals. Words, according to Plato, are the means whereby we ascend to a clear and vital perception of things, and behind every common term there lurks an unquestionable reality. To seize upon this reality is accordingly the business of his dialectics. With Aristotle, again, whose philosophy was fundamentally distinct from his master's, the business of dialectics is to treat of the manner in which our minds discourse of things: words, according to him, are the representatives of our thoughts; and class words set forth in speech our notions or generalized conceptions of individuals. He therefore denied the eternal existence of Plato's ideas, but admitted with him the existence of those ideas in every individual of the species of which they formed the proper essence. As the phrases went among the schoolmen, Aristotle maintained universalia in re; Plato, universalia ante rem; the Nominalists, universalia post rem. Logic, with Aristotle, was the science of names and notions; with Plato it was more the science of names and realities. With Aristotle logic was an end in itself—it was the science of the laws of discursive thinking; with Plato it was simply a means whereby the eternal and only realities which lay concealed behind universals were to be laid hold of. It is curious, however, that "different philosophers," according to Sir W. Hamilton, "have maintained that Aristotle was a Realist, a Conceptualist, and a Nominalist in the strictest sense." (Hamilton's Edition of Reid's Works, p. 405, note.)

At a very early period in the history of the church the Nominal-Platonic ideas of being and unity had become inseparably connected with the mysteries of the Christian religion. The science of logic, as taught in the Organum of the Stagyrite, who was, indeed, the true founder of the science, was expounded by the doctors of the schools according to the principles of Plato, which had no proper connection with it. This practice continued until the times of St Anselm, about the end of the eleventh century, when a disputed passage in Porphyry's Introduction to the Organum of Aristotle, respecting the disagreement of the Platonists and Peripatetics on the nature of genera, brought matters to a crisis. Roscelinus, or Roscellin, a canon of Compiegne, maintained that the notions of universals, of genera, and species were possessed of no reality,—were nothing but mere words (platus vocis) employed to designate qualities common to different individuals. By this man, and in this manner, was Nominalism founded. Although apparently a trifling dispute in itself, the theory of ideas was nevertheless a fundamental one in the scheme of human knowledge. The controversy thus excited by the canon of Compiegne had accordingly an extensive bearing. If every genus is only a mere word, it follows that individuals are the only realities, and that the senses are at bottom the only sources of knowledge. And not only so, but on this theory no absolute affirmation respecting truth is possible, for such an affirmation involves of necessity a general idea, which, ex hypothesi, is destitute of real validity. Hence we have scepticism at the next remove. Among churchmen, of course, all such disputes partook more or less of a theological character. The Nominalist doctrine, by denying a real validity to abstract ideas, was charged with necessitating the denial of the realities of unities, and, in particular, of the great unity which forms the basis of the Holy Trinity. If the Trinity represented only a nominal unity, then it was pretty obvious that Roscelinus, the Nominalist, was a very dangerous person indeed. The poor canon had therefore to retract, on pain of death, at the Council of Soissons in 1092. St Anselm was the first to attack the position of Roscelinus, in a work on the Unity of the Trinity, but with a degree of temperance all his own, and with a realistic creed different from that of the Realists of the schools. Seeing that Nominalism and heresy had now become synonymous, it behoved philosophic churchmen to crush the error. William of Champeaux, in order to do the work effectually, rushed straight to the opposite extreme, and, as the founder of scholastic Realism, maintained that universals, so far from possessing a merely nominal existence, were in point of fact the only real entities. Genera, according to him, individualize themselves in particular beings in such a manner that individuals differ only by the variety of their accidents, but are identical as to their essence or real nature. A few steps further and we have pantheism. Such, then, were the alternatives to which the speculations of Roscelinus and William of Champeaux reduced the thinkers of that time. Nominalism and scepticism, Realism and pantheism—such was the dilemma. Abelard, the illustrious pupil of the founder of Realism, like a wise man, chose a middle course in preference to the horn of either extreme. He ascribed a reality both to individuals and universals, but a reality differing in the case of each. Individuals had, he maintained, an essential existence, and universals an existence ideally real. Genera were abstracted from particulars, and existed in the mind in the form of notions, or (as we call them now) concepts, and were held together and expressed by words called general terms. Hence the theory termed Conceptualism, or conceptual Nominalism, which was really the one maintained by all succeeding Nominalists, and is the doctrine of ideas generally believed in at the present day. Abelard displeased his proud master, William, by this middle course, and, as so often happens, gave satisfaction to no one. Realism accordingly triumphed in silence during the second stage of middle-age scholasticism. (See Cousin's Introduction to the unpublished works of Abelard, and his Fragments de Phil. Scholast.) Nominalism had well-nigh died out, when William of Occam or Ockham, an English Franciscan, and pupil of Duns Scotus, came forward in the fourteenth century to revive its decadent glory. This "invincible doctor" attacked the Realists with great spirit, and raised the doctrines of the Nominalists into greater repute than they had ever before enjoyed. Nominalism, however, was no longer upheld by Occam and his followers in its absolute form; Conceptualism is the appropriate designation for their theory. The contest between the opposing parties was now conducted with a virulence and ferocity altogether unworthy of philosophers. The strife raged in the schools of Britain, France, and Germany with the greatest fury. When words would not carry conviction, the passionate doctors had recourse to blows; when argument and patience were alike exhausted, the invincible combatants drew upon one another, and ended the quarrel in blood. The doctor invincibilis himself, after espousing the cause of Philippe le Bel, King of France, and of Louis of Bavaria, against the Popes Boniface VIII. and John XXII., died at Munich, "persecuted but not subduced," about the middle of the fourteenth century. Realism, as then identified with the cause of the Pope and the church, continued to prosper in Italy under the patronage of the Roman See; while Nominalism, which, from the influence of its most staunch supporter, had become identified with the political movement then agitated against the church, was generally received throughout the greater part of the European continent. But the time came when not only the University, but the King, of France issued edicts of extermination against the Nominalists. Their writings were ordered by Louis XI., in 1473, to be seized and bound in the libraries in iron chains; but after some time the edict was mitigated, the exiled sect was permitted to return, and Nominalism gained the ascendancy in France as in Germany. The fruitless and fatal consequences of these wranglings gradually became apparent. Scholasticism, with its endless subtleties and perverse ingenuities, became suspected, and a disposition towards mysticism gradually made its appearance among thinking men. (See Mysticism.) The revival of letters, and the advent of the Reformation, eventually put an end to the fiercest controversy known in the annals of philosophical speculation. Among the most celebrated Nominalists not already mentioned, were,—Durand of Saint Pourcain, John Buridan, Robert Holcot, Gregory of Rimini, and Henry of Hesse, in the fourteenth century; and Matthew of Crochove, Peter D'Ailly, Gabriel Biel, and Raymond of Sebonde, in the fifteenth. Among the Realists not already cited may be mentioned Henry of Gand, Walter Burleigh, Thomas of Strasbourg, Marsile of Inghein, and Thomas of Bradwardine,—all in the fourteenth century. In addition to the ordinary histories of philosophy, the reader may consult with profit Ueber Nominalismus u. Realismus, von Erner, 1842; also the Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques. (J. D.—S.)