=After Duns Scotus.= The church failed to canonize Scotus; for though he claimed to be its most faithful son, he taught the dangerous doctrine of freedom of the individual will. His doctrine also marks the beginning of empirical investigation of nature and the decadence of formal logic. Although a most faithful follower of the church, he brought scholasticism to the point where it no longer served the church. The result was ultrarationalism――not what Scotus intended. But when revelation no longer rests upon rational ground, and when there exists by its side a philosophical science whose basis is rational, it is only a question of time when revelation shall lose its authority for men. When philosophy passed from Scotus to Ockam, Ockam’s conception of the individual as the ultimately real and of the unrationality of revelation gave him the old name of nominalist. This is a misnomer, for the doctrine of Ockam is quite different from the nominalism of Roscellinus. The temper of the time was different from those days when Roscellinus followed upon Anselm, for the superior minds were now turning away from orthodoxy. Disciples of both Thomas and Scotus were becoming nominalists. It was an epoch when scholasticism was being discredited by the universities, when theology was less a study in the curricula, when religion was being superseded by magic, when there were rival claimants for the Pope’s chair, when there was strife between the church and the state. The spirit of the age was toward nominalism in every form. The command, in 1339, to the University of Paris not to use Ockam’s works shows how powerful had become his following during his lifetime. Dominicans and Augustinians went over in crowds to nominalism. This beginning of nominalism betrays the growth of European national life, modern languages, art, and the sciences. It shows the beginning of Protestantism in all departments. The church attempted to crush it in the way that it had crushed Roscellinus. But this nominalism had too deep root. =William of Ockam (1280–1349): Life and Teaching.= Ockam was called _Doctor Invincibilis_. He was born in Ockam, England, and studied at Oxford, where he probably had Scotus as a teacher. After teaching in Paris (1320–1325), he left Paris and joined the opponents of the temporal power of the Pope. He was imprisoned at Avignon, but escaped to the court of Louis of Bavaria, where he died. To Louis he made his celebrated promise, “If you will defend me with your sword, I will defend you with my pen.” He has been called “the first Protestant.”