moral person belonging to the human category, is the individual man. Considered logically and not empirically, then, the impulse towards civil society must begin with the individual man, and must derive its authority immediately from him. No other philosophical genesis of it is conceivable on the postulate that the individual man is the only moral person belonging to the human category. The affirmation of this postulate on the one hand, and the denial of it on the other, has led to what may be justly termed the most notable controversy in the whole history of human speculation. This was the issue that was involved in the contest between institutionalism and particularism in the old philosophies, and which raged in the famous conflict between Nominalism and Realism in the Middle Ages. Long before Christianity, the Platonic theory of ideas, and the idealism of Aristotle, laid the foundation for such an institutionalistic philosophy as almost excluded the notion of the responsibility of the individual. We shall see in the next lecture how the corrective

1 Compare Locke: Of Civil Government, chap. viii. Compare also Sir Henry Sumner Maine: Early History of Institutions, lect. xii. pp. 354370.

to this, which the Gospel supplied, was neutralized in large degree by the subordination of the Church to the civil power; and when, in the Middle Ages, the study of Aristotle was re-introduced into Europe by and through the Mahomedan doctors of Cordova, the School-authors eagerly adopted a modified type of the old idealism, and built up their famous doctrine of Realism, contending that universals were the only realities, and individuals nothing except as derived from them. Against this the inevitable re-action appeared in the theory of Nominalism, according to which individuals are the only realities, and universals but the figments of the mind, having no objective entity. The latest and most brilliant champion of Nominalism was William of Occam, an Englishman, who won the battle for his theory at the English universities, and became the father of English liberty, and the philosophical forerunner of the Reformation. It is easy to see how nearly related this scholastic controversy was to the political questions which have since agitated the world. Looking back upon those wordy debates, we can discern a significance in them, which, perhaps, the pedan

tic disputants themselves little understood. Though the postulate of Nominalism has been drafted into the service of many destructive tendencies, and needs, as we shall presently see, to be limited and controlled, yet in asserting the dignity of the individual man, and declaring that he alone is a moral and personal entity in the human category, the first step was taken towards the formulation of a true philosophy of civil society. Just as rapidly as this truth obtained the mastery, the dignity of conscience and the rights of men as men began to receive their due acknowledgment and recognition. The first blow was struck, since the conversion of Constantine, against despotism of all kinds when it was admitted that man is greater than any agent that he employs, and that governments were made for men and by men, and not men by governments and for them.

The philosophical postulate of Nominalism, however, needs to be qualified. Stated without qualification, it leads, no doubt, to all the errors of mere individualism; but, properly stated, those errors are guarded against, and, indeed, excluded. "Nominalism acknowledges only the individual as

the truly existing, and claims that the universal is but an abstraction from the individual." This conclusion I accept. But, then, the individual cannot be regarded as an isolated being, but must be considered as a member of a class or genus composed of like individuals. In other words, all individuals are distinguished by characteristics which indicate that they should be classified into genera, and, in the case of man, by corresponding social instincts, which move them to so group themselves together; and it is only in this association that the individual is able to realize his own completeness. For instance, the individual man only is the truly existing; but it is the individual man characterized by a generic likeness to his fellow-man, and by a strong social instinct, which moves him to associate with his fellow-man, and to find his true completeness as well as his highest development and advantage in such association. With this qualification we may freely apply the postulate of Nominalism to our present purpose, and are in a position to define the philo

I Martensen: Christian Ethics, p. 211.

2 Martensen: Christian Ethics, p. 211. Aristotle: Politics, bk. i. chap. ii.

sophical basis of civil society. Civil society, then, rests upon a social compact between individual men acting in obedience to a law of their being, and under the impulses of their common nature. The ethical subject in this compact is the individual man: but it is man the moral and spiritual being; man made in the image of his Maker, and, however fallen, still the object of divine care; it is man distinguished by such characteristics, guided by such direction, and acting under that impulse of his nature which moves him to seek his highest good in association with his fellows, -he it is who makes and maintains that social compact with his fellows which sustains and constitutes civil society. No doubt, some of the motives to such association are derivable from mere experience; but the original impulse is found in his For man is essentially a social and political,' as well as a moral and intellectual, being. There is a law of his nature which impels him toward political society. He has certain welldefined faculties and capacities which not only seek, but depend, for their highest development, upon association with his fellows and while the Aristotle: Politics, bk. i. chap. ii.

own nature.