C. ENTELECHY AND SUBSTANCE 



a. THE CATEGORY OF SUBSTANCE AND ITS 

 APPLICATION IN GENERAL 



THE late Eduard von Hartmann says somewhere in his 

 Kategorienlehre that all philosophy has been a struggle about 

 the concept of " substance " ; and I doubt if any one who 

 knows the history of philosophy would say that he is 

 wrong. 



Substance and inherence, in fact, are the most common 

 of all categories ; even the child knows very much earlier 

 how to use them than how to apply causality ; but in spite 

 of that the problem of what is properly to be regarded as 

 " substance " remains the unsolved problem in all the various 

 fields of philosophical research. 



The categories of substance and inherence, as all of you 

 know, find their simplest application whenever " things " are 

 regarded as possessing properties, as being the " bearers " of 

 their properties. But science proceeds on its way and soon 

 regards the " being a thing " as a property itself. What sort 

 of a property ? What then is the criterion of not being a 

 property ? 



We see here that from the very beginning a very 

 remarkable principle of ontology is coming into action, at 



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