exist without this or that football-player. And granted that a person can exist without playing
football, he nevertheless cannot exist without doing something. The quality redness cannot exist
without some subject, but it can exist without this or that subject; similarly a subject cannot exist
without some quality, but can exist without this or that quality. The supposed ground for the
distinction between things and qualities thus seems to be illusory.
The true ground of the distinction is, in fact, linguistic; it is derived from syntax. There are proper
names, adjectives, and relationwords; we may say "John is wise, James is foolish, John is taller
than James." Here "John" and "James" are proper names, "wise" and "foolish" are adjectives, and
"taller" is a relation-word. Metaphysicians, ever since Aristotle, have interpreted these syntactical
differences metaphysically: John and James are substances, wisdom and folly are universals.
(Relation-words were ignored or misinterpreted.) It may be that, given sufficient care,
metaphysical differences can be found that have some relation to these syntactical differences, but,
if so, it will be only by means of a long process, involving, incidentally, the creation of an
artificial philosophical language. And this language will contain no such names as "John" and
"James," and no such adjectives as "wise" and "foolish"; all the words of ordinary languages will
have yielded to analysis, and been replaced by words having a less complex significance. Until
this labour has been performed, the question of particulars and universals cannot be adequately
discussed. And when we reach the point at which we can at last discuss it, we shall find that the
question we are discussing is quite quite different from what we supposed it to be at the outset.
If, therefore, I have failed to make Aristotle's theory of universals clear, that is (I maintain)
because it is not clear. But it is certainly an advance on the theory of ideas, and is certainly
concerned with a genuine and very important problem.
There is another term which is important in Aristotle and in his scholastic followers, and that is
the term "essence." This is by no means synonymous with "universal." Your "essence" is "what
you are by your very nature." It is, one may say, those of your properties which you cannot lose
without ceasing to be yourself. Not only an individual thing, but a species, has an essence. The
definition of a species should consist in mentioning its essence. I shall return to the conception of