=Anselm’s Arguments for the Existence of God.= The so-called “Anselmic Arguments for the Existence of God” are the best known parts of Anselm’s teaching, and in the eyes of the churchman place his theodicy in the “status of a finished science.” To get their cogency we must remember the underlying thought of mediæval realism; the more universal a thing is, the more real it is――the more it exists and the more perfect it is. (See p. 352.) In his _Monologium_ he developed the so-called _cosmological argument_: A single perfect and universal being must be assumed as the cause of all lesser beings. God’s essence must involve his existence. Every other being can be thought as coming into existence from some external cause, while God alone exists from the necessity of his own nature. In his _Proslogium_ he elaborated his more famous _ontological argument_: Man has the idea of a perfect being; Perfection involves among other qualities that of existence, otherwise we could think of a more perfect being or one who did possess existence; Therefore God exists. =Roscellinus= (d. 1100 about): =Life and Teaching=. Roscellinus, a canon of Compiègne, was the first scholastic to attempt to modify dogma by the dialectic,――not that there had not occurred throughout the history of the church many theological controversies. Before this time such controversies had on the whole arisen over doctrines that had not yet become dogma. The particular object of the attack of Roscellinus was the dogma of the Trinity, and the base of his attack was none other than philosophy. Roscellinus completely failed in getting the church to modify this particular doctrine, but he succeeded in a larger way than he could have imagined. He brought out into distinctness the issue between reason and revelation. The fundamental question thereafter was as to the rights of the human reason and the rights of divine revelation. Roscellinus supplied a powerful shock to faith and awakened the schools to the consequences of questions which had seemed before to be merely logical problems. Roscellinus was a nominalist, and it was from the point of view of nominalism that he attempted to change the dogma of the Trinity. He made a life-long defense of the doctrine that the Godhead was three different substances, agreeing only in certain qualities. This is tritheism and not a Trinity. But this was only the most striking example of his application of the general principle of nominalism. In general, universals are only names and have an existence only in the human mind. _Universalia post rem._ Individuals alone exist. The groups formed out of many individuals by addition, or the parts of an individual formed by division, are mental affairs and have no reality. Roscellinus was opposed by Anselm, condemned by the church, and obliged to recant. He fled to England, returned to France, and again preached his doctrine.