Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/751

SUBSTANCE. 651 SUBSTANTIVE LAW. everything whatsoever possesses, besides its at- tributes, an unknown substratum; that they rest upon or inhere in a mystical and inscrutable thing, that holds the attributes together, without being itself an attribute. This view appears at the very dawn of phil- osophical speculation, having been doubtless an inheritance from pre-scientific and pre-critieal thinkers, and has persisted through all the cen- turies up to the present. It appears in the doc- trine of the Ionic philosopliers (see Ioxian School) as air or earth or water., in Heraclitus (q.v. ) as fire, and in Parmenides (q.v.) as pure being. In Aristotle we have a more critical view, according to which the individual realities of experience are substances, while species are second substances. But Aristotle did not answer the question what it is in the individual reali- ties of experience that constitutes their sub- stantiality. The Stoics returned to the idea of a substrate as the bearer of attributes, and this view persisted through the Middle Ages as the only one advocated, except by the Xoniiiui lists (see N0MIN.LISM) . In modern philosophy Des- cartes and Spinoza share this substrate theory. Leibnitz moved away from this static conception and regarded substance as a being capable of action or 'primitive force,' but it was his great opponent Locke who put definitely away the old substrate theory. "AH our ideas of the several sorts of substances are nothing but collections of simple ideas, with a supposition of something to which they belong, and on which they subsist, though of this supjjosed something we have no clear distinct idea at all." "AH the simple ideas, that thus united in one substratum make up our complex ideas of several sorts of substances, are no others but such as we have received from sensation or reflection," while "^nost of the simple ideas that make up our complex ideas of substances, when truly considered, are only powers." Bi^rkeley went further. Locke had accepted the existence orf material as well as spiritual 'powers;' Berkeley maintained that "the suppo- sition of external bodies is not necessary for producing our ideas; since it is granted they are produced sometimes, and might possibly be produced always in the same order we see them in at present, without their concurrence." Hence "there is not any other substance than l^pirit, or that which perceives." About this substance, however. Berkeley could give no con- sistent account. At one time we are told that thing or being "comprehends under it two kinds entirely distinct and heterogeneous, which have nothing in common but the name, viz. Spirits and Ideas. The former are active, in- visible substances — the latter are inert, fleeting, or independent beings, which subsist not by themselves, but are sujiported by or exist in minds or spiritual substances." But in another place we are told that -fhe soul alirai/s fJiiiiks; and in truth whoever shall go about to divide in his thoughts, or abstract the cxisleiice of a spirit from its cociitalion, will, I believe, find it no easy task." Hume developed the idea con- tained in the last quotation and arrived at the result that all substance is an 'unintelligible chima'ra.' Kant emphasized these 'relations' which united perceptions, and found in them the essence of substance. Substance with him is a category Vol. XVIII.— 42. of relation, which when schematized, i.e. brought into relation with time and space, be- comes "the permanence of the real in time, or the idea of the real as presupposed in the em- pirical determination of time, and as persisting wliile all else changes." But this view has a de- fect. There is too nmch absoluteness in the conception. It is not necessary that there should be anything which persists through all changes. It is only necessary that there should be some quality which remains nldlivclt/ un- changing, while other qualities ehange. The quality forms then the nucUnis around which the changes gather as variations of a thing. The same thing does not always remain unclianged in the same qualitj-. Now it may be this qual- ity, now that. Were it necessary that some one quality should remain unchanged, that quality would come to be considered the substance of the thing. But the fact that the relatively perma- nent quality of one stage of change becomes the relatively changing qviality of another stage makes it impossible to identify the substance with any one quality. On this account some philosophers prefer to regard substantiality as shifting from time to time. But perhaps a more satisfactory definition of substance can be obtained from the true theory of judgment. Going back to Aristotle's concep- tion of substance (ovnia) as that of which predi- cation is made, we find (see Judgment) that predication is always made of a synthesis of at- tributes. The orange of which yellowness is predicated is an object which is yellow, grows on a tree, develo])ed from a flower, is going to be eaten by me next minute, etc. The orange is the synthesis of all these quantities or attri- butes, some of which may be past and some not yet existent. The only object of which all the qualities of an orange are predicable is the totality of the predicable qualities. This totality exists at any one time, not as a whole, but in part. At no one moment is it consummated as a whole. All the stages of its history are neces- sary to its totality, but it is not necessary that these stages should be taken out of the real" order of succession in which they stand and made to e.xist contemporaneously before the totality of the process can exist. A temporal whole is from its very nature not a whole at any one time shorter than the whole time of its existence, and the whole time of its existence has within it the distinctions of priority and subsequence which make it impossible to summate the whole into one moment. Now the synthesis of all the quali- ties which appear to connnon sense as the quali- ties of a thing is itself the substance of that thing. L^sed in this sense substance is no longer what its etymology indicates, viz. a something standing beliind phenomena, but it is what the Greek term ovola means, viz. the being of which attributes are predicable. See Piiilosopuy; J1et.piiysk',s : Scholasticism. SUBSTANTIVE LA'W (Lat. stibiitiiiitirus, self-existent, substantial, real, from suhsfaiitia, being, essence, material). Tluit l)r;uich or divi- sion of the whole law which defines and estab- lishes human rights and privileges with reference to property and prescribes rules of conduct to be observed by mankind in the various relations of life. All other law may be classed as adjective or remedial, that is. as dealing with the methods of enforcement and maintenance of the normal