16 THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 



against philosophical attacks. The question of the thing 

 which the " plain man " regards as " possessing " these qualities 

 must be treated still more briefly and (unfortunately) in a 

 form that may, on account of its brevity, seem dogmatic. 

 The difficulties that have prevented philosophers from accepting 

 the Thing as Objective are well known and need not be 

 described.* It has not been found possible to conceive 



\ anything of the .nature of a " core " which should at once be 

 without qualities, yet be able to " have " or " support " the 

 qualities which we know, and to persist through their changes. 

 , The attempt of materialism or of mechanistic science to account 

 for the whole body of experience in terms of " matter " and 

 " force " is so easily shown by metaphysical criticism to be a 

 failure that.it would not be mentioned here if it were not for 

 its "special relevance to the aim of my essay. From the point of 

 view which I have adopted the capital fault of materialism lies, 

 riot in its belief that the primary qualities or some of them 

 are Objective, but in its denial that the secondary qualities are 

 so. It seeks to replace the presented facts of experience by 

 other alleged facts of which the former are explained to be 

 only appearances. 



The hopelessness of this kind of solution of the problem of 

 Thinghood (which has been known to Philosophy from the time 

 of Berkeley) has led to a search for a better one in other 

 directions. Typical of the kind of solution that has commended 

 itself of late is Lotze's pronouncement that " it is not in virtue 

 of a substance contained in them that things are ; they are, 



i when they are qualified to produce the appearance of there 

 being a substance in them."f The "core of substance" has 

 disappeared and we are left with an "empty shell" or (more 

 soberly) a complex of sensible qualities. 



* See Bradley, Appearance and Reality, Ch. VIII ; Lotze, Metaphysics, 

 i, Bk. I, esp. Ch. VII. 

 t Metaphysics, i, 37. 



