, etc. But the bearer of these attributes
is so much chalk, which thereupon is called the substance in which
they inhere. So the attributes of this desk inhere in the substance
'wood,' those of my coat in the substance 'wool,' and so forth.
Chalk, wood and wool, show again, in spite of their differences,
common properties, and in so far forth they are themselves counted
as modes of a still more primal substance, matter, the attributes of
which are space occupancy and impenetrability. Similarly our
thoughts and feelings are affections or properties of our several
souls, which are substances, but again not wholly in their own
right, for they are modes of the still deeper substance 'spirit.'
Now it was very early seen that all we know of the chalk is the
whiteness, friability, etc., all WE KNOW of the wood is the
combustibility and fibrous structure. A group of attributes is what
each substance here is known-as, they form its sole cash-value for
our actual experience. The substance is in every case revealed
through THEM; if we were cut off from THEM we should never suspect
its existence; and if God should keep sending them to us in an
unchanged order, miraculously annihilating at a certain moment the
substance that supported them, we never could detect the moment, for
our experiences themselves would be unaltered.
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