Note 226 — THE BRITISH QUARTERLY APRIL 1871 (continued 6)

Berkeley is usually esteemed the foremost of modern Nominalists, but we question if his Nominalism was more than a denial of Conceptualism. It was not a positive doctrine. There are several assertions in his 'Common-place Book' which show that even in his earlier days he was not a Nominalist in the proper sense of the term. He denies once and again Locke's statement that we know particulars only; he believes in the real existence of classes or kinds; and he says that genera and species are not abstractions. In his later writings he probably found that in his eagerness to attack the conceptualist doctrine of abstract conceptions, he had probably been carried too far, for in his third edition of 'Alciphron' he curiously omits those chapters which treat of Nominalism, and in 'Siris' the reality of universals is assumed throughout.