SUBSTANCE. ']^ 



to the Becoming of things, we should only have 

 plunged into greater difficulties. For we are im- 

 pelled by the very law of causation itself, which 

 forbids us to say that things have been caused by 

 nothing, to ask for cause after cause in an infinite 

 regress, and can never find rest in a first cause in 

 the endless series of phenomena. And even if a 

 first cause could be reached, it would be subject to 

 all the difficulties discussed in the last chapter (§ lo). 



What then shall we say of a principle of explana- 

 tion which cannot explain, but deludes us with its 

 endless regress as we pursue it .^ What but that it 

 is false and as deceitful as it is incapable ? 



Lastly, there must be recorded against the category 

 of causation the crowning absurdity, that, like Time, 

 it contradicts itself. For in its later stao^es as a 

 *' scientific conception " it becomes forgetful -of its 

 original form, and engages in an insoluble conflict 

 with the freedom of the will, which it condemns as 

 an intolerable exception to its supremacy. It rises 

 in rebellion against the will which begot it, and this 

 final impiety adds dishonour to the damage of its 

 fall (Cp. App. I. § 5). 



§ 12. The category of Substance presents diffic- 

 ulties hardly less serious than those of causation. 

 For if substance be the permanent in change, where 

 shall it be found in a world where nought is per* 

 manent but change ? And in any case it must be 

 admitted that the relation we suppose to exist 

 between substance and attributes, the way in which 

 we imagine substances to hold plurality in unity, is 

 certainly false. For while we regard a substance 

 as the unity of many attributes, and compose a 

 thing out of its qualities, the real things are concrete 

 unities. Their attributes or qualities are nothing 



