nsual existence of the archetypal forms of Plato's
poetical fancy, is a very potent factor in the real world. Ideals of
conduct, of manners, of art, of policy, have a traditional life: they
do not pass away with the individuals in whom they have existed,
in whom they are temporarily materialised: they survive as potent
influences from age to age. The "idea" of Chaucer's Man of Law,
who always "seemed busier than he was," is still with us. Mediaeval
conceptions of chivalry still govern conduct. The Universal enters
into the Individual, takes possession of him, makes of him its
temporary manifestation.

Nevertheless, the Nominalists are right in insisting on the importance
of names. What we call the real world is a common object of perception
and knowledge to you and me: we cannot arrive at a knowledge of it
without some means of communication with one another: our means of
communication is language. It may be doubted whether even thinking
could go far without symbols with the help of which conceptions may
be made definite. A concept cannot be explained without reference to
a symbol. There is even a sense in which the Ultra-Nominalist doctrine
that the individuals in a class have nothing in common but the name
is tenable. Denotability by the same name is the only respect in which
those individuals are absolutely identical: in this sense the name
alone is common to them, though it is applied in virtue of their
resemblance to one another.

Finally, the Conceptualists are right in insisting on the mind's
activity in connexion with general names. Genera and species are not
mere arbitrary subjective collections: the union is determined by the
characters of the things collected. Still it is with the concept in
each man's mind that the name is connected: it is by the activity of
thought in recognising likenesses and forming concepts that we are
able to master the diversity of our impressions, to introduce unity
into the manifold of sense, to reduce our various recollections to
order and coherence.

So much for the Ontological question. Now for the PSYCHOLOGICAL. What
is in the mind when we employ a general name? What is the Universal
psychologically? How is it conceived?

What breeds confusion in these subtle inquiries is the want of fixed
unambiguous names for the things to be distinguished. It is only by
means of such names that we can hold on to the distinctions, and
keep from puzzling ourselves. Now there are three thin