individuals it destroyed the whole conception of the solidarity of
original sin; while those of its professors who allowed no existence
of their own to the parts of an individual whole, resolved the Trinity
into three Gods. On the other hand, the danger of Realism was that,
since individuals were regarded merely as forms or modes of some
general idea, these philosophers were inclined to make no distinction
between individuals and to fall into pantheism. As a result, the
personality of man, and with it the immortality of the soul,
disappeared, and even the personality of God threatened to lose itself
in the universe which He had created. These tendencies will be clear
from a short account of the chief schoolmen or writers on Scholastic
Philosophy.

[Sidenote: Roscelin and Anselm.]

The first great names are those of Roscelin and Anselm of Canterbury.
Roscelin (between 1050 and 1125), primarily a dialectician, rigidly
applied his logic to theological dogmas. If we may judge from the
accounts of his opponents, Anselm and Abailard, he took up a position
of extreme individualism and denied reality alike to a whole and to
the parts of which any whole is commonly said to be composed. The
application of this principle to the doctrine of the Trinity landed
him in tritheism, and he did not shrink from the reproach. Roscelin, a
theologian by accident, was answered by Anselm who was primarily a
theologian, and a dialectician by accident. If Roscelin was the
founder of Nominalism Anselm identified Realism with the doctrine of
the Church. But Anselm's Realism is not the result of independent
thought. In his methods he has been rightly styled the "last of the
Fathers." His keynote was Belief in the Christian faith as the road to
understanding it. Thus his object was to give to the dogmas accepted