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Not only has Peirce a greater regard than even Bergson for the actual diversity and spontaneity of things, but he is in a much better position than any other modern philosopher to explain the order and coherence of the world. This he effects by uniting the medieval regard for the reality of universals with the modern scientific use of the concept of continuity. The unfortunate war between the pioneers of modern science and the adherents of the scholastic doctrine of substantial forms, has been one of the great misfortunes of human thought, in that it made absolute atomism and nominalism the professed creed of physical science. Now, extreme nominalism, the insistence on the reality of the particular, leaves no room for the genuine reality of law. It leaves, as Hume had the courage to admit, nothing whereby the present can determine the future; so that anything is as likely to happen as not. From such a chaotic world, the procedure of modern natural and mathematical science has saved us by the persistent use of the principle of continuity; and no one has indicated this more clearly than Peirce who was uniquely qualified to do so by being a close student both of Duns Scotus and of modern scientific methods.