xii ACTIVITY AND SUBSTANCE 225 



substance it is the final refutation. For it a substratum 

 could only be the potentiality of an actuality which was 

 the true substance, and so far from explaining the latter 

 would need it for its own explanation. As evepyeia is 

 prior to Svvapis, so is the behaviour of a thing to the 

 substance conceived to render that behaviour possible. 1 

 The truth therefore is that the activity is the substance : a 

 thing is only in so far as active. So it is the activity 

 which makes both the essence and the accidents, both 

 of which are as it were precipitated from the same 

 process of active functioning. The essence is merely such 

 aspects of the whole behaviour as are selected from among 

 the rest by reason either of their relative permanence or 

 of their importance for our purposes. 2 And so we may 

 define the substratum which we have feigned as the 

 hidden source of substantiality as being nothing but 

 an attempt to express the thought of a permanent 

 possibility of activity. But true reality does not reside 

 among the tangled roots of things. We have no need 

 to dig down vainly to a subject, which is not thought 

 or will or feeling, but only has them, in derision, in 

 order to discover our true self. To find true Being 

 we must look upwards to the Ideal, not downwards to the 

 unknowable. Our true self is not what underlies thought, 

 will and feeling, but what combines them in a perfect 

 harmony. 3 Reality is not what transcends experience 

 but what perfects it. 



Let us once conceive, therefore, a Being which has 



1 This principle really involves the rejection of several popular superstitions in 

 philosophy. For instance, the so-called a priori element in knowledge stands 

 in the relation of duvapis to actual knowledge, and, so far from explaining it, 

 needs to have its assumption justified by its convenience for the purposes of actual 

 knowing. Similarly, the ultimate reason why we may not argue monistically from 

 the actual plurality of things to the higher reality of an all-including world-ground 

 is that the plurality is actual (tvepydq.), while the unity is only implicit (5vvd.fj.ei), 

 and rests on our experience of the former. It is, therefore, of secondary reality 

 and value. Cp. p. 67. 



2 These two criteria are, of course, convergent. For a permanent aspect is 

 naturally one which it is important for us to take into account, while an 

 important aspect is naturally one which we try to render permanent. J. S. Mill 

 (Examination of Hamilton, p. 239) recognizes the first only when he says that 

 the sensations answering to the Secondary Qualities are only occasional, those 

 answering to the Primary, constant. 



3 Cp. Riddles of the Sphinx, p. 140. 



Q 



