It is scholastic
realism--realism as intense and unmitigated as that of Scotus Erigena
a thousand years ago. The essence of such realism is that it maintains
the objective existence of universals, or, as we call them nowadays,
general propositions. It affirms, for example, that "man" is a real
thing, apart from individual men, having its existence, not in the
sensible, but in the intelligible world, and clothing itself with the
accidents of sense to make the Jack and Tom and Harry whom we know.
Strange as such a notion may appear to modern scientific thought, it
really pervades ordinary language. There are few people who would, at
once, hesitate to admit that colour, for example, exists apart from
the mind which conceives the idea of colour. They hold it to be
something which resides in the coloured object; and so far they are as
much Realists as if they had sat at Plato's feet. Reflection on the
facts of the case must, I imagine, convince every one that "colour"
is--not a mere name, which was the extreme Nominalist position--but a
name for that group of states of feeling which we call blue, red,
yellow, and so on, and which we believe to be caused by luminiferous
vibrations which have not the slightest resemblance to colour; while
these again are set afoot by states of the body to which we ascribe
colour, but which are equally devoid of likeness to colour.
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