principle we find no ground for “participation.” Alike above the idea (_e. g._ the idea of man), and the phenomenon (_e. g._ the individual man), there must stand a third common to both, and in which the two were united, _i. e._ as Aristotle was in the habit of expressing this objection, the doctrine of ideas leads to the adoption of a “third man.” The result of this Aristotelian criticism is the immanence of the universal in the individual. The method of Socrates in trying to find the universal as the essence of the individual, and to give definitions according to conception, was as correct (for no science is possible without the universal) as the theory of Plato in exalting these universal conceptions to an independent subsistence as real individual substances, was erroneous. Nothing universal, nothing which is a kind or a species, exists besides and separate from the individual; a thing and its conception cannot be separated from each other. With these principles Aristotle hardly deviated from Plato’s fundamental idea that the universal is the only true being, and the essence of individual things; it may rather be said that he has freed this idea from its original abstraction, and given it a more profound mediation with the phenomenal world. Notwithstanding his apparent contradiction to Plato, the fundamental position of Aristotle is the same as that of his master, viz., that the essence of a thing (τὸ τί ἐστιν, τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) is known and represented in the conception; Aristotle however recognizes the universal, the conception to be as little separated from the determined phenomenon as form from matter, and essence or substance (οὐσία) in its most proper sense is, according to him, only that which cannot be predicated of another, though of this other every remaining thing may be predicated; it is that which is a this (τόδε τι), the individual thing and not a universal.