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The Nature of Substance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Extract

The classical and scholastic view of things was of neutral substance to which qualities were attached as substantial adjuncts. Qualities could apparently not be conceived of otherwise than as entities: blueness, hardness, pliability, toughness, translucency, and so on. Noun substantives were the part of speech by which they could most properly be referred to. The use of adjectives did not imply that these qualities were not substantival entities, but emphasized their subordinateness to the thing itself, and were useful in giving pliability, lightness, and elegance to speech. But qualities could not be conceived of otherwise than as something superadded to the neutral substance which carried them.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1930

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References

page 394 note 1 It is of course clear that this is a development of the theory of a four-dimensional space-time continuum, itself an aspect of Einstein's Relativity Theory. It would unduly prolong this article to study the relations between the Relativity Theory and my theory of substance.

page 395 note 1 “Panchromatism,” Ilford Magazine, p. 5.

page 395 note 2 “The Photography of Coloured Objects,” Kodak Magazine, p. 10.

page 396 note 1 “The Photography of Coloured Objects,” Kodak Magazine, pp. 10 and 11.

page 402 note 1 There is much truth in William James’s contention that one’s first duty when in the presence of apparently opposing views is to see whether there is no way by which they can be reconciled, and in his further contention that the result of such reconciliation must represent an important advance in the discovery of truth.

page 402 note 2 Divine Love and Wisdom, English translation, Swedenborg Society, London, 1890, pp. 113, 114.Google Scholar

page 402 note 3 Ibid., p. 119.

page 403 note 1 Divine Love and Wisdom, English translation, Swedenborg Society, London, 1890, p. 121.Google Scholar

page 403 note 2 Ibid., p. 131.

page 407 note 1 Outline of Psychology, p. 320.

page 407 note 2 Ibid., p. 317.

page 407 note 3 Ibid., p. 320.