tion of any individual man. Nominalism, on the contrary, asserts the superior reality of individual objects, and turns the universal into a mere name. Now it was quite natural for Aristotle, with his tendency towards physical science and experiment, and the amassing of particular facts, to take the Nominalist view, so far as to assert the reality of individual objects. But there is reason for doubting that he ever became a thorough and consistent Nominalist. For the present it is sufficient to note that at the outset of his philosophical career he appears to have made an onslaught, in several dialogues which he wrote for the purpose, on Plato’s doctrine of Ideas. In three passages of his extant works (‘Eth.’ I. vi.; ‘Met.’ I. vi., XII. iv.), he gives summaries of his arguments on the subject. He couches those arguments in courteous language, and in one place introduces them with words which have been Latinised into the well-known phrase—Amicus Plato, sed magis amica Veritas. Yet the arguments themselves appear somewhat captious. And there may have been a youthful vehemence in the mode in which he first urged them. Here probably first appeared “the little rift within the lute;” this was the beginning of that divergence of mind and attitude which, growing wider, rendered it ultimately impossible that Aristotle should be chosen to succeed Plato, as inheritor of his method, and head of the Academic school.
In another set of circumstances, tradition affords us indications of the independence and self-confidence of Aristotle having been manifested during the lifetime of
