If we dissent from these conclusions, and maintain that there is substance apart from its attributes (though we insist on this distinc tion being purely logical), it is because the idealists have not proved the fundamental position on which all such speculations rest, namely, the truth of the correlation between the conception and the object, so that the one should be taken as the entire expression of the other.
In our analysis of substance it is impossible to get beyond attributes ; and therefore, subjectively speaking, substance is nothing more than the synthesis of attributes : but does this entitle us to assume that it is equally the case objectively ? Not until the subject has been proved to be the complete expression of the object.
But the truth is, attributes themselves are but the conditions excited in us by objects. The Ego acted on by the non-Ego under goes certain affections : these mental affections are variously extension, colour, weight, hardness, &c., and these are all the effects of the action of the non-Ego upon the Ego, and as a consequence these are all we know, and all we know of the non-Ego. To call substance therefore the synthesis of attributes, is to say that in the synthesis of our mental affections is contained all that constitutes the non-Ego, instead of saying that in the synthesis of our mental affections is contained all we can positively Immo of the non-Ego; it is saying that we include all existence, and that beyond our conceptions nothing exists; it is taking the human mind as the measure of the universe.
We maintain therefore, that inasmuch as what we call attributes are not vague abstractions, but positive effects of matter acting on the sensory (and we assume the existence of matter because Idealism has failed in disproving it) • so there must be substance or cause to produce those effects ; and although we can only know these effects and by these effects, yet we are necessitated to assume an inconceivable cause or substance. We do not know this substance : we only know what sensations it excites in us.
The stronghold of Idealism is consciousness. In consciousness there is nothing but transformations of itself—no substance, no external world is given ; it knows, it feels, it is conscious of nothing but itself. But consciousness is equally tho stronghold of realism ; for we arc as conscious that what we call substance, or the world, is not ourselves, and does not depend upon us, and is a distinct existence, as we are of our own existence. Hence the universality of the belief of an external world—hence the impossibility of the idealists' conceiv ing for an instant the non-existence of substance.
In conclusion we may observe, that substance is the unknown, un knowable substratum on which rests all that we experience of the external world ; it is the hidden noumenon whose manifestations as represented in perception we call matter and the phenomena of matter, and of which every positive predicate must necessarily be false, and consequently all inquiry into its nature baseless.