Aristotle, seeing this difficulty, placed the idea _in_ the objects forming the class. It may be objected that putting x _in_ a place individualizes it as much as putting it _out of_ a place. This is quite true if the "in" is taken locally--taken as it is when we speak of a man as being in one room rather than another. The x in one object is not identically the x in another object. We do not get the universal, x in the abstract, until we lose the distinctions "in the one object," and "in the other object." Two x's cannot be the same in sense first, from the mere fact that they are two; an x in one place and an x in another place are always two. If, however, by the statement that the universal is in the objects, one mean merely that the universal is that element x, which, combined with certain elements, forms a total which is known as this object, and combined with certain others forms a total which is known as that, but taken by itself contains no distinction of this and that; if this is all that is meant by the "in," there is no objection to the use of the statement, and it is strictly true. The x element is a part of each of the objects, but, until some addition is made to it, it is not "the x in this object" or "the x in that object"; it is what they have in common. The "in common" means just this. The Nominalistic doctrine that only individuals have real existence, and that the universal, whatever it may be, is to be sought in the mind, distinguishes between the spheres of being and denies to one what it allows to another. Of the extreme nominalistic position, that the only true universal is the word, which may be applied indifferently to several distinct objects, I shall not here speak. I have discussed this wholly untenable view elsewhere.[46] But the more reasonable Nominalism, the conceptualistic, is worthy of examination here. In so far as it holds that the mind can form a concept, which shall consist of the element or elements several objects have in common, we have no quarrel with it. Here we find a true universal, obtained by discarding differences which distinguish objects from one another. We obtain by this that mental core common to several similar mental objects. If, however, we distinguish between mental objects and "real" things corresponding to them, we have evidently two distinct fields to consider. When we say a number of objects in consciousness are alike, we are simply pointing out the fact that they contain a universal element as well as individual differences. Can we say that a number of "real" objects are alike? If so, what do we mean in saying it? If there is nothing to prevent us from calling them individuals, there would seem to be nothing to prevent us from affirming that they are "really" alike. Does likeness ever mean anything except sameness in difference? Is not, then, the element in which several objects resemble each other a universal element, whether the objects be mental