Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/268

256 sequences observed independently of our activity can often be essentially reproduced by that activity, it proceeds to explain all sequences by the activity of individuals. This, of course, it is required to do if its hypothesis is to hold, and this it is successful in doing while no facts can be brought forward to disprove its case.

VIII. Other Categories of Experience.—Although the consideration of continuity and causality brings out most clearly, perhaps, the distinction between the aim, method, and scope of pluralism and the new scientific method respectively, incidentally making clear the value to be attached to the criticism of the former by the latter, it is of great importance to examine the other categories of experience if a clear conception is to be framed of the basis on which pluralism rests. The attention may be directed in the first place to the category of Substance and Attribute. A review of the classical attempts to deal with the notion of substance makes it clear that the problem resolves itself into an endeavor to reconcile the principles of permanence and change. Heraclitus, who was the first to bring out more or less plainly the nature of the difficulties involved, held that only change is permanent; but closer examination shows that, with any significant meaning which can be attached to the term 'change,' the truth of the matter is that change implies permanence. For, in the first place, it is apparent on general grounds that if there is a change, there must be a thing which changes, the said thing maintaining its identity throughout the change. Otherwise, there is simply one thing and then another thing, that is, mere succession and not change at all, properly so-called. From the scientific standpoint we certainly do consider mere alteration alone, that is, simply a succession of different presentations. But from the subjective point of view, if I have first A and then B before me, I can in no significant sense be said to have apprehended a process of change; at most there has been a change in myself, and this, since it is I who have perceived both A and B, assumes my permanence. As a matter of fact, we do only perceive a process of change, as such, at a high level of experience; yet, when we have reached this level, we feel impelled to look for