Note 37 — LECTURE III. ON THE VALUE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES.

On conceptualism, as well as on nominalism and realism, see the Introduction to the inedited works of Abelard, and also 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 21, p. 457; 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture 20, p. 215, and the work already cited on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, p. 49: "Nothing exists in this world which has not its law more general than itself. There is no individual that is not related to a species; there are no phenomena bound together that are not united to a plan. And it is necessary there should really be in nature species and a plan, if every thing has been made with weight and measure, cum pondere et mensura, without which our very ideas of species and a plan would only be chimeras, and human science a systematic illusion. If it is pretended that there are individuals and no species, things in juxtaposition and no plan; for example, human individuals more or less different, and no human type, and a thousand other things of the same sort, well and good; but in that case there is nothing general in the world, except in the human understanding, that is to say, in other terms, the world and nature are destitute of order and reason except in the head of man."