[72]. In fact, it is clear that if we speak of “idea” or “volition” in connection with the absolute individual, we cannot mean actual “ideas” or actual “volitions.” We must be using the psychological terms improperly in something of the same sense in which we speak of a man’s “guiding ideas” or “settled will” to denote what clearly, whatever it may be, is not actual ideational or volitional process. See further, Bk. IV. chap. 6, § 1.

CHAPTER IV
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.

§ 1. When we turn from the inquiry into the structure of Reality as it must be conceived by a consistent Philosophy, to consider the aspect in which it appears to ordinary non-philosophical thought, the systematic unity which has demanded our attention in the two preceding chapters seems to be replaced by a bewildering and almost incalculable variety. According to the naïve pre-scientific theory of existence to which the experiences of practical life naturally give rise, and which serves as the point of departure for all the more scientific and systematic theories of the physicist, the psychologist, and the metaphysician, the world is composed of a multitude of apparently independent things, partly animated, like ourselves, partly inanimate. Each of these things, while in some sense a unit, is thought of as possessing an indefinite multiplicity of qualities or properties, as capable of standing in a variety of relations to other things, and as acting upon other things and being influenced by them in a variety of ways.

In all these respects, it should be observed, the naïvely realistic thought of the pre-scientific mind treats what from a more developed point of view would be distinguished as mental and physical existences alike. Human persons, like the other things of which my environment is composed, are thought of as being at once units and the possessors of diverse properties, as capable of a variety of relations to one another and to other things, and as interacting with each other and the rest of the environment. The recognition of the psychical as an order distinct from the physical, with its momentous consequences for general metaphysical theory, belongs to a later and much more sophisticated stage of intellectual development. Also, it must be noted, for the naïvely realistic intelligence, I am myself thought of as simply one object or thing in an environment of things of a similar nature, and my relations to that environment are conceived as being of the same type as the relations between its various component parts. I too am, for my own thought, so long as it remains at this primitive level, simply a thing with numerous properties, in various relations to other things, and interacting with them in diverse ways.[[73]]

We have called this exceedingly primitive way of conceiving the nature of existence “pre-scientific,” on the ground that both in the mental development of the individual and in that of a community of individuals it precedes even the most tentative conscious efforts to organise thought about the world into a coherent whole. All scientific and philosophical constructions may be regarded as so many artificial modifications of this earlier point of view, instituted and carried out for the purpose of rendering it more coherent and systematic. At the same time, our use of the epithet “pre-scientific” must not be allowed to mislead. The “pre-scientific” view may and does co-exist in the same mind with the various modifications of it which arise in the effort to think consistently. We are all of us habitually “naïve realists” in respect of those aspects of the world of experience which lie outside the limits of our personal scientific studies; and even as regards those aspects of existence in respect of which our theoretical views may be of a much more developed type, we habitually relapse into the “pre-scientific” attitude when our immediate object is practical[[74]] success in action rather than logical consistency in thinking. For the purposes of everyday life, the most “advanced” man of science is content to be a naïve realist outside his laboratory.

Again, pre-scientific as the primitive attitude towards existence is, in the sense of being unaffected by the deliberate effort after system and coherency of thought, it is so far scientific as to be a real though rudimentary and unconscious product of our intellectual need for order and system of some kind in our thought about things. It is a genuine though an unconscious result of our earliest reflection on the course of experience, and thus a true thought-construction, not a passive reproduction of a merely “given” material. It performs in rudimentary fashion, and without explicit purpose, the same task of systematising experience which the various scientific and philosophical theories of the more developed mind undertake more elaborately and with conscious intent. It is thus pre-scientific, but not properly speaking unscientific.

As the mass of ascertained fact accumulates and reflection upon it becomes more systematic and deliberate, our primitive conception of the systematic nature of the real inevitably proves unsatisfactory for two reasons. New facts are discovered which we cannot fit into the old scheme without modification of its structure, and, again, the concepts in terms of which the scheme was originally constructed prove on examination to be themselves obscure and ambiguous in their meaning. There is thus a double motive perpetually operative in bringing about reconstruction of the original scheme. To the various sciences it falls in the main to devise such alteration of the old schematism as is necessary for the inclusion of fresh facts; it is the special province of metaphysical criticism to examine the various terms both of the original scheme and its subsequent modifications, with a view to determining how far they form an ultimately intelligible and coherent system.

§ 2. When we scrutinise the original “pre-scientific” theory of the world from this point of view, we shall find that its four leading features give rise to four metaphysical problems of great generality and considerable difficulty. The conception of the world as made up of a multiplicity of things, each of which is one, gives rise to the problem of the unity of the thing; the plurality of the qualities, and again of the relations ascribed to the single thing, gives rise to the problems of Substance and Quality and of Relation; the belief in the interaction between different things finally gives rise to the exceptionally important and difficult problem of Causality. The four problems are not altogether disconnected; in particular, it is hard to discuss the sense in which a thing can be spoken of as “one,” without at the same time raising the question how the “one” thing stands to its many properties, and again discussing the general meaning of relation. And the problem of Causality may be raised in so general a form as to include the other three. Still, for the sake of having a definite order of discussion, it will be well to take them as far as may be separately, and to proceed from the simpler to the more complex. When we have indicated in outline our solution of these problems, we shall have to ask what is the general conception of a thing which our results establish, and whether and on what grounds we are warranted in believing in the actual existence of things answering to our conception. The present chapter will be devoted to the examination of the first three problems; in the succeeding chapter we shall discuss the meaning of Causality, and indicate our general conclusion as to the existence of “things.” With this result our survey of the general structure of Reality will be completed, and we shall then proceed in our third and fourth books to examine the most important of the special problems suggested by the existence of physical nature and conscious mind respectively.