and
time. Thus matter represents the refusal to think away spatial and
temporal characteristics and to arrive at the bare concept of an
individual entity. It is this refusal which has caused the muddle of
importing the mere procedure of thought into the fact of nature. The
entity, bared of all characteristics except those of space and time, has
acquired a physical status as the ultimate texture of nature; so that
the course of nature is conceived as being merely the fortunes of matter
in its adventure through space.

Thus the origin of the doctrine of matter is the outcome of uncritical
acceptance of space and time as external conditions for natural
existence. By this I do not mean that any doubt should be thrown on
facts of space and time as ingredients in nature. What I do mean is 'the
unconscious presupposition of space and time as being that within which
nature is set.' This is exactly the sort of presupposition which tinges
thought in any reaction against the subtlety of philosophical criticism.
My theory of the formation of the scientific doctrine of matter is that
first philosophy illegitimately transformed the bare entity, which is
simply an abstraction necessary for the method of thought, into the
metaphysical substratum of these factors in nature which in various
senses are assigned to entities as their attributes; and that, as a
second step, scientists (including philosophers who were scientists) in
conscious or unconscious ignoration of philosophy presupposed this
substratum, _qua_ substratum for attributes, as nevertheless in time and
space.

This is surely a muddle. The whole being of substance is as a substratum
for attributes. Thus time and space should be attributes of the
substance. This they palpably are not, if the matter be the substance of
nature, since it is impossible to express spatio-temporal truths without
having recourse to relations involving relata other than bits of matter.
I waive this point however, and come to another. It is not the substance
which is in space, but the attributes. What we find in space are the red
of the rose and the smell of the jasmine and the noise of cannon. We
have all told our dentists where our toothache is. Thus space is not a
relation between substances, but between attributes.

Thus even if you admit that the adherents of substance can be allowed to
conceive substance as matter, it is a fraud to slip substance into space
on the plea that space expresses re