Substance
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in philosophy, that which is and abides as distinguished from accident, which has no existence of itself, and is essentially mutable. The derivation of the word in this sense is, according to Augustine, from the Latin subsistere, and so that which subsists of or by itself; Locke prefers to connect it with the Latin substo = to stand under, to support, to uphold. The first idea of substance is probably derived from the consciousness of selfthe conviction gained by experience that, while sensations, thoughts, and purposes are continually changing, the Ego Ego constantly remains the same. Observation teaches us that bodies external to us remain the same as to quantity or extension, though their color and figure, their state of motion or of rest may be changed. Locke, without departing from the knowable, placed the substance of an object in some essential or fundamental quality, the presence of which maintained, while its removal destroyed, the identity of the object, and Fichte made it consist in a synthesis of attributes; holding that these, synthetically united, gave substance, while substance analyzed gave attributes. In theology, essence, nature, being. Used specially of the Three Persons in the Godhead, who are said to be the same substance, i. e., to possess one common essence. The principle of substance in philosophy is the law of the human mind by which every quality or mode of being is referred to a substance. In algebra, the operation of putting one quantity in place of another, to which it is equal, but differently expressed. In theology, the doctrine that in the crucifixion Christ was divinely substituted for, or took the place of, the elect, or of all mankind obeying the law in their stead, suffering the penalty expiating their sins, and procuring for them salvation. Used also of the principle involved in the bloody sacrifices of the Jewish economy (in which the animals were types of Christ). and in a still wider sense of the offering of the lower animals in the place of men, and of unbloody in the place of bloody sacrifices in ethnic religions. See ARMINIANISM: CALVINISM: SACRIFICE.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921, substance was still presented as a live metaphysical principle, a law of the mind by which every quality is referred to something that underlies it. Within a decade that assumption was under heavy attack: Whitehead's Process and Reality (1929) proposed events and processes rather than enduring substances as the basic furniture of the world, while Russell and the logical positivists treated the underlying substratum as an unnecessary posit, and later philosophers such as Quine argued about what exists in terms of what our theories must quantify over rather than what stands under. Modern physics pushed the same way, describing matter in terms of fields, particles and interchangeable mass and energy rather than an abiding stuff bearing changeable qualities. Today the debate survives mainly as the contest between substance theories and bundle theories of objects, and in chemistry the word simply means a material of definite composition. Readers should note that this entry visibly runs into its neighbour: the algebraic and theological definitions from the second half belong to the article on substitution, not substance.
Written for this edition, 2026.