the
bran and chaff after this heated operation. Plato and Aristotle probably
agreed much better than the opposite parties they raised up imagined;
their difference was in the manner of expression, rather than in the
points discussed. The Nominalists and the Realists, who once filled the
world with their brawls, and who from irregular words came to regular
blows, could never comprehend their alternate nonsense; "whether in
employing general terms we use _words_ or _names_ only, or whether there
is _in nature anything_ corresponding to what we mean by a _general
idea_?" The Nominalists only denied what no one in his senses would
affirm; and the Realists only contended for what no one in his senses
would deny; a hair's breadth might have joined what the spirit of party
had sundered!

Do we flatter ourselves that the Logomachies of the Nominalists and the
Realists terminated with these scolding schoolmen? Modern nonsense,
weighed against the obsolete, may make the scales tremble for awhile,
but it will lose its agreeable quality of freshness, and subside into an
equipoise. We find their spirit still lurking among our own
metaphysicians! "Lo! the Nominalists and the Realists again!" exclaimed
my learned friend, Sharon Turner, alluding to our modern doctrines on
_abstract ideas_, on which there is still a doubt whether they are
anything more than _generalising terms_.[42] Leibnitz confused his
philosophy by the term _sufficient reason_: for every existence, for
every event, and for every truth there must be a _sufficient reason_.
This vagueness of language produced a perpetual misconception, and
Leibnitz was proud of his equivocal triumphs in always affording a new
interpretation! It is conjectured that he only employed his term of
_sufficient reason_ for the plain simple word of _cause_. Even Locke,
who has himself so admirably noticed the "abuse of words," has been
charged with using vague and indefinite ones; he has sometimes employed
the words _reflection_, _mind_, and _spirit_ in so indefinite a way,
that they have confused his philosophy: thus by some ambiguous
expressions, our great metaphysician has been made to establish
doctrines fatal to the immutability of moral distinctions. Even the
eagle-eye of the intellectual Newton grew dim in the obscurity of the
language of Locke. We are astonished to discover that two such
intellects should not comprehend the same ideas; for Newton wrote to
Locke, "I beg your pardon for