Substance (metaphysics)

“ Here you may study physical science, or to put it better, physical sciences in all their branches, and for that matter meta [17] physic or metaphysics, that is to say, all that is connected with physics and has no other name, so impossible is it to designate by a substantive that which has no substance, and is but a dream and an illusion. Here you may contemplate with admiration philosophers addressing themselves to the solution, dissolution, and resolution of the Absolute, to the determination of the Indeterminate and to the definition of the Infinite. ”

“ Next we must observe that each substance comes into being 5 out of something that shares its name. (Natural objects and other things both rank as substances.) For things come into being either by art or by nature or by luck or by spontaneity. ”

“ But this special interpretation of the way in which the facts of experience form a system is no part of our initial postulate as to the general nature of the real; it is 29simply one among other theories of the concrete character of the universe, and it is for Metaphysics itself to test its merits. ”

“ The belief that what is ultimately real must be immutable is a very common one: it gave rise to the metaphysical notion of substance, and finds, even now, a wholly illegitimate satisfaction in such scientific doctrines as the conservation of energy and mass. ”

“ The sentient energy with which we began, which was at least equal in dignity with matter at the outset, and which assumed importance enough in the scheme to cause the matter to move, to attract and to repel, is now made the function of matter. Matter is the substrate, the substance; soul or mind the function of matter, housed in the latter and dependent upon it. Matter has become king; energy or mind its slave. ”

“ Differently stated, what we call matter is in no sense substance, and the attributes by which we describe it are only the effects produced upon our senses by contact with force-forms, manifesting the life in nature. So that the really substantial thing in life is seen to be form, of which so-called matter is but an incident, apparitional only, and of little reality and no substantiality whatever—a term to express the condition of manifestation. ”

“ These general remarks suffice, without any further development, to vindicate the reality of the material object of metaphysics. But here the question arises, Are all real beings without exception the object of this science? ”

“ Metaphysics, not physics, enables us to stand erect on sublime heights, surveying the immeasurable universe of Mind, peering into the cause which governs all effects, while we are strong in the unity of God and man. ”

“ We have no sound notions either in logic or physics; substance, quality, action, passion, and existence are not clear notions; much less, weight, levity, density, tenuity, moisture, dryness, generation, corruption, attraction, repulsion, element, matter, form, and the like. ”

“ He holds that all the time, space, motion, matter known to us are phenomena; and that force, the ultimate of ultimates, is, as known to us, a phenomenon, “an affection of consciousness.” If so, then all we know is these phenomena, affections of consciousness, subjective affections, but produced by an unknown power. So far as this main point of transfigured realism is steadily maintained, it is a compound of idealism and realism, but not materialism. ”

“ Without entering into the grounds of the metaphysical doubts which have been raised concerning the existence of Matter and Mind as objective realities, we stated as sufficient for us the conclusion in which the best thinkers are now for the most part agreed, that all we can know of Matter is the sensations which it gives us, and the order of occurrence of those sensations; and that while the substance Body is the unknown cause of our sensations, the substance Mind is the unknown recipient. ”

“ And thus when matter is treated of as a thing standing in its own right, continuous and identical, metaphysics is not concerned. For, in order to study the laws of a class of phenomena, these phenomena are simply regarded by themselves. ”

“ And, lastly, when the author, correcting himself, as we think, says that the notion of substance reduces itself to what he calls a “fundamental phenomenon,” he does nothing but change the word, and in reality reverts to what we call substance. For in what sense does anything fundamental—that is to say, that to which other phenomena ultimately reduce themselves, and which cannot be reduced to any other—still preserve the name of phenomenon? ”

“ But this is to be observed, That the rational matter can and doth move in its own substance, as being the purest and subtillest degree of matter; but the sensitive being not so pure and subtil, moves always with the inanimate Matter, and so the perceptive figures which the rational Matter, or rational corporeal Motions make, are made in their own degree of Matter ”

“ Hence the minor premises of other examples given above are only fit for a select audience. That Either ghosts are not spirits, or they do not exert mechanical energy, supposes a knowledge of the principle, generally taught by physical philosophers, that only matter is the vehicle of energy; and that Either appearance is all, or there is substance beyond consciousness, is a doctrine which only metaphysical [Pg 158] philosophers could be expected to understand, and upon which they could not be expected to agree. ”

“ In all finite beings we find actuality and potentiality, perfection and imperfection. Primary matter, which is the basis of material substance, is a pure potentiality. Moreover, change necessarily supposes a potential element, for it is a transition from a state .of potentiality to a state of actuality ”

“ In our view of the underlying reality of the physical order, as explained in the last chapter, we have scarcely gone further, except in the explicitness of our phraseology, than we should be followed by many who profess a complete disbelief in metaphysical construction and an exclusive devotion to positive natural science. ”

“ Beside all which, since magnitude, figure, and motion are but accidents of matter, not matter, and only the substance is truly matter; and since the substance of any one part of matter does not differ from that of another, if any matter can be by nature cogitative, all must be so: but this we have seen cannot be. ”

“ The ideas we have of these they acknowledge not to be the resemblances of any thing existing without the mind, or unperceived, but they will have our ideas of the primary qualities to be patterns or images of things which exist without the mind, in an unthinking substance, which they call matter. By matter, therefore, we are to understand an inert, useless substance, in which extension, figure, motion, &c. ”

“ It is only when, in Metaphysics, we seek to convert description of the phenomenal into interpretation of it as the appearance to sense of a more ultimate Reality, that the principle of the 212individuality of all real existence can come once more to its rights. ”

“ But these are not the only inconsistencies in the doctrine of substance. We are told that substance is unknowable, that matter and force are its attributes. We are told that God, the thing in itself, is an intramundane being and acts in the substance as force or energy. ”

“ I might [Pg 191] say nearly as much respecting the word matter, which is the metaphysical correlative of form; but it will suffice to remark that matter, in philosophy, always means a receptive potency which is actuated by a form; so that, if the form is accidental, the word matter stands for material substance itself as receptive, because it is the substance that receives accidental forms ”

“ This distinction between real and apparent, then, being understood, I have now to show you for what purpose I have brought it under your notice, and how it may enable you to understand the position which my system of metaphysics occupies, or professes to occupy, in relation to our antecedent systems of philosophy. We have seen that in the natural world there is a wide discrepancy between the real and the apparent and that the physical sciences, paying but little heed to the apparent, and placing no trust in it, press forward to the ascertainment of the real. ”

“ Again, in dealing with the more complex special problems of Metaphysics, it is natural to recognise a distinction corresponding to the separation of Cosmology from Rational Psychology. Common language shows that for most of the purposes of human thought and action the contents of the world of experience tend to fall into the two groups of mere things and things which are sentient and purposive—Physical Nature on the one hand, and Minds or Spirits on the other.other. ”

“ Now, such an inquiry into the general character of reality, as opposed to more or less unreal appearance, is precisely what is meant by Metaphysics. Metaphysics sets itself, more systematically and universally than any other science, to ask what, after all, is meant by being real, and to what degree our various 5scientific and non-scientific theories about the world are in harmony with the universal characteristics of real existence. ”

“ I attempted to show that what we call a material object is not itself a substance, but is a system of particulars analogous in their nature to sensations, and in fact often including actual sensations among their number. In this way the stuff of which physical objects are composed is brought into relation with the stuff of which part, at least, of our mental life is composed. ”

“ The theory, as announced by the leading men of science, has therefore been to the effect that there exist in the physical universe two real things—Matter and Energy—in place of one only, as commonly supposed for so long. ”

“ For how that can pierce, seal, and print a figure, which hath neither substance nor matter, my reason is not able to comprehend, since there can be no figure without matter or substance, they being inseparably united together, so, that where figure is, there is also substance, and where substance is, there is also figure; neither can any figure be made without a substance. You may say, Ideas, though they are not material or corporeal beings themselves, yet they may put on figures, and take bodies when they please: I answer, That then they can do more then Immaterial Spirits ”

“ By a wealth of facts and experimental illustrations he demonstrates the purely metaphysical character of both the prevalent theories, and gradually develops the only consistent concept of an element which was possible for his time—namely, any substance which no experimental evidence could show to be reducible to simpler substances. ”

“ It is known, that there are metaphysicians who have raised a controversy on the point; maintaining that we are not warranted in referring our sensations to a cause such as we understand by the word Body, or to any external cause whatever. Though we have no concern here with this controversy, nor with the metaphysical niceties on which it turns, one of the best ways of showing what is meant by Substance is, to consider what position it is necessary to take up, in order to maintain its existence against opponents. ”

“ But for those in whom the speculative desire to form some coherent conception of the scheme of things to which we belong as a whole is strong, Metaphysics has a higher importance. In such minds the impulse to reflect on the nature of existence as a whole, if debarred from systematic and thorough gratification, is certain to find its outlet in unsystematic and uncriticised imaginative construction. ”

“ And I think that the most prominent characteristic of metaphysics, in history, has been its profession to prove the truth about non-natural existents. I define ‘metaphysical,’ therefore, by a reference to supersensible reality; although I think that the only non-natural objects, about which it has succeeded in obtaining truth, are objects which do not exist at all. ”

“ By substance I mean what exists in itself and is conceived of by itself; the conception of which, that is, does not involve the conception of anything else as the cause of it. 4. By attribute I mean whatever the intellect perceives of substance as constituting the essence of substance. 5. Mode is an affection of substance, or is that which is in something else, by and through which it is conceived. 6. God is a being absolutely infinite; a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses His eternal and infinite essence. ”

“ In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter in terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in terms of matter: matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property of matter—each statement has a certain relative truth. ”

“ His philosophical writings, containing new and striking thoughts, some of them only now bearing fruit, upon the great metaphysical problems of universals, substance, causality, and the organism of the universe, cannot without danger of misconception be compared at length with a system which thinks itself competent to classify all metaphysical systems according as they contain some one or other theory of perception. ”

“ These are called the Primary Qualities of Matter; and it is assumed that they belong to matter by itself, whether we look on or not: whilst colour, heat, sound, etc., are called Secondary Qualities, as depending entirely upon the reaction of some conscious animal. By physical science the world is considered in the abstract, as a perpetual redistribution of matter and energy, and the distracting multiplicity of sensations seems to be got rid of. ”