Scotists, by advocating an _actual_ distinction between these grades of being, as “formalities” in the individual, have exposed themselves to the charge of extreme realism. They teach that each of these “formalities” has, for abstract thought, a _formal_ unity which is _sui generis_. And this unity is not regarded as a product of thought, any more than the distinction between such unities. Thus, the materiality apprehended by thought in all material things is one, not because it is made one by the abstracting and universalizing activity of thought, as most if not all other scholastics teach; it is not merely _conceptually one_ through our thought-activity, it is _formally one_ apart from the latter; and it thus knits into a “formal” unity all material things. And so does “life” all living things; and “animality” all animals; and “rationality” all men. Now, if this “formal unity” of any such essential or metaphysical grade of being were regarded as a real unity, monism would be of course the logically inevitable corollary of the theory. But the “formal” unity of any such essential grade of being Scotists will not admit to be a real unity, though they hold it to be characteristic of reality independently of our thought. They contend that this unity is quite compatible with the _real plurality_ conferred upon being by the principles which individuate the latter; and thus they cannot be fairly accused of monism. Their reasoning here is characteristically subtle. Just as any metaphysical grade of being, considered as an object of thought, is in itself neither manifold individually nor one universally—so that, as Thomists say, designating it in this condition as the _universale directum_, or _metaphysicum_, or _fundamentale_, or _quoad rem conceptam_, we can truly affirm of it in this condition neither that it is one (logically, as a universal) nor that it is manifold (really, as multiplied in actual individuals),(160)—so likewise, Scotists contend, it is in this condition _ontologically_, as an entity in the real order independently of thought, and as such has a unity of its own, a formal unity, which, while uniting in a formal unity all the individuals that embody it, is itself incapable of fitting this grade of being for actual existence, and therefore admits those ultimate individuating principles which make it a real manifold in the actual order.(161)