I. At the Dawn of the Michael Age

The development of Thought-life was carried on now by men in the human sphere. At first, people were uncertain what these Thoughts were, which they had. This uncertainty runs through the teachings of the Scholastics. They were divided into two schools: Realists and Nominalists. The Realists—with Thomas Aquinas and his circle at their head—still felt the old connection between Thought and Thing, as both belonging together. Accordingly they looked on the thoughts as actual realities, existing in the Things. The thoughts of a man they viewed as a real something flowing from the Things into his soul. The Nominalists had a strong feeling of the fact that the soul makes her own thoughts. They felt thoughts as something purely subjective, which exists in the soul and has nothing whatever to do with the things. In their opinion, thoughts were only the names men made for things. (The Scholastics spoke of ‘Universals,’ not of ‘Thoughts,’ but this does not affect the general principle of their outlook, since thoughts always bear a universal character in regard to the single things.)