Franciscan Studies

462Book Reviews more likely that Henno's mother-tongue was Flemish, since the bilingual people of that part of the country usually were and are Flemish. Alaimo's second argument, "Henno writes French even when he is writing in a town where at least today people speak Flemish, consequently he is Walloonborn ," is no argument at all; indeed, according to the added footnote that means that Henno, working in Tournai, writes "opinatores, vulgo controlleurs ;" now, Tournai is a French speaking town, and that single French word "controlleurs" is Flemish as well. Alaimo rejects the text of Foppens that Henno was "Flemish from Lille" (p. 9); one of his reasons is that Lille, in 1629, was judged to be a Walloon city; but he forgets to say that Lille was historically a Flemish city and actually bilingual: even a Frenchspeaking citizen of Lille could and can be called "Flemish from Lille." Briefly, that first chapter of Alaimo's thesis is confused and confusing. Further, in his general conclusion (p. 151) the author seemingly forgot he "proved" that Henno is not from Lille. According to the biography (p. 4142 ) Henno went to Lille upon the chapter of 1713, and there he died the following year. That is summarized p. 151: "Post capitulum a, 1713 in suam urbem natalem se recepit, ubi decessit e vita A.D. 1714..." A final suggestion: if manuscripts are quoted, the reader would appreciate finding in a footnote at least the essential parts of the texts referred to. E.M. BUYTAERT, O.F.M. Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, New York. Wilhelm von Ockham: Untersuchungen zur Ontologie der Ordnungen. By Gottfried Martin. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter and Co., 1949. Pp. xiv- 260. This study, completed in 1938 as Habilitationsschrift at the University of Cologne, was not published until 1949 on account of the conditions resulting from the war. Professor Martin, in a second preface written in 1949, indicates that the lapse of ten years has not brought about any substantial change in the convictions expressed in the book, for which reason it is now published in its original form without alteration. The subject of the book is perhaps more accurately expressed by its subtitle than by the name "William of Ockham." Ockham is treated only as a major figure in a long development, stretching from Aristotle through Leibniz, which Professor Martin views as leading up to the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant. As is stated in the original preface of 1938, "Die Arbeit ist entstanden aus Untersuchungen über die geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen der Kritik der reinen Vernunft." (p. vi). The specific development which is traced in this study, is that of the transformation of the Aristotelian categories of accident, particularly the categories of quantity and telation, into "transcendental" categories of being or of possible experience. As regards Ockham's part in this history, Professor Martin seeks to show that Ockham's rejection of quantity and relation as "real accidents" exttinsically determining substances, ordinarily construed as a sign of Book Reviews463 his "nominalism," is in reality motivated by a conviction that these categories express transcendental determinations of being, of the same order as the transcendental determination expressed by the term 'one.' This theme is elaborated through a comparison of views concerning the ontological import of the concepts of unity, number, magnitude, and relation , found in the writings of Aristotle, Plotinus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Ockham, Gabriel Biel, Suarez, and Leibniz. St. Thomas is held to have provided the initiative, and the point of departure, for Ockham's interpretation of the categories of quantity and relation, by introducing a distinction between two senses of 'unity' and 'number' - a transcendental sense, and an accidental sense. Unity and number, as accidents of substance, are distinct realities inhering in substances, in principle separable from the substances without entailing corruption of them. Transcendental unity, however, is characterized as an intrinsic mode or determination of being, which adds no new reality to the being which it determines, and which is not divided by a "real distinction" from the other determinations of the existent thing. St. Thomas is said to have extended this differentiation between transcendental and accidental, to the concept of number as well; and he is...