CHAPTER IV. The World of Things—(1) Substance, Quality, and Relation

THE WORLD OF THINGS—(1) SUBSTANCE, QUALITY, AND RELATION

§ 1. The natural or pre-scientific view of the world regards it as a plurality of “things,” each possessing qualities, standing in relation to others, and interacting with them. § 2. Hence arise four problems: those of the Unity of the Thing, of Substance and Quality, of Relation, of Causality. § 3. No simple answer can be given to the question, What is one thing? The Unity of the Thing is one of teleological structure, and this is a matter of degree, and also largely of our own subjective point of view. § 4. Substance and Quality. The identification of the substance of things with their primary qualities, though useful in physical science, is metaphysically unjustifiable. § 5. Substance as an “unknowable substratum of qualities” adds nothing to our understanding of their connection. § 6. The thing cannot be a mere collection of qualities without internal unity. § 7. The conception of a thing as the law or mode of relation of its states useful but metaphysically unsatisfactory. Ultimately the many can be contained in the one only by “representation”; the unity in things must be that of an individual experience. § 8. Relation. We can neither reduce qualities to relations nor relations to qualities. § 9. Again, the attempt to conceive Reality as qualities in relation leads to the indefinite regress. §10. We cannot escape this difficulty by taking all relations as “external.” And Professor Royce’s vindication of the indefinite regress seems to depend on the uncriticised application of the inadequate category of whole and part to ultimate Reality. The union of the one and the many in concrete experience is ultra-relational. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE: Dr. Stout’s reply to Mr. Bradley 120