Occam proceeds to state other opinions opposed to that first given; he does not exactly give his own decision, yet in this same passage (Quæst. 8) he, in the main, argues in favour of the opinion “that the universal is not something real that has explicit subjectivity (_esse subjectivum_) neither in the soul nor in the thing. It is something conceived, which, however, has objective reality (_esse objectivum_) in the soul, while the external thing has this objective reality as an explicitly existent subject (_in esse subjectivo_). This comes to pass in the following manner. The understanding, which perceives a thing outside the soul, forms the mental image of a similar thing, so that, if it had productive power, it would, like an artist, exhibit it in an absolutely existing subject, as numerically an individual distinct from any preceding. Should anyone be displeased by this manner of speaking of the mental image as being _formed_, it may be said that the mental image and every universal conception is a quality existing subjectively in the mind, which by its nature is the sign of a thing outside of the soul, just as the spoken word is a sign of the thing, arbitrarily instituted for marking out that thing.” Tennemann says (Vol. VIII. Section II. p. 864): “One result of this theory was that the principle of individuation, which had occupied to such an extent the attention of the Scholastics, was cast aside as utterly unnecessary.” Thus the main question with the Scholastics concerns the definition of the universal, and this was in itself highly important and significant for the culture of more modern times. The universal is the One, but not abstract; it is conceived or thought of as comprehending all things in itself. With Aristotle the universal was, in a judgment, the predicate of the subject in question; in a syllogism it was the _terminus major_. With Plotinus, and especially with Proclus, the One is still incommunicable, and is known only by its subordinate forms. But because the Christian religion is a revelation, God is no longer therein the unapproachable, incommunicable, a hidden mystery: for the various stages of the progression from Him are verily His manifestation, and the Trinity is thus the revealed. In this way the triads and the One are not distinguished, but these three Persons in the Godhead are themselves God and One, _i.e._ One as it is for another, as in itself relative. The Father, the God of Israel, is this One; the moment of the Son and of the Spirit is the Most High in spiritual and bodily presence, the former in the Church, the latter in Nature. With the Neo-Platonists the universal is, on the contrary, only the first condition of things which then merely opens out and develops; with Plato and Aristotle it is rather the Whole, the All, the All in One. d. BURIDAN.