is to ignore its relations in space and time; it is the fact of having such relations that seems to be meant when anything is said to "exist." (This, at least, is one meaning of this very ambiguous word.) It may be suggested that all simple essences do actually exist, in the sense in which a shade of colour exists wherever there is a patch having that colour. As for complex essences, they will not be substantives, but a collection of propositions—true in the case of Caesar, false in the case of Hamlet. They become false through the prelude "once upon a time," which has to be supposed in every tale if no more definite time is indicated. It would take us too far into technical logic to elaborate this suggestion. But the question is vital to Mr Santayana; perhaps it is a case where his dismissal of "exact science" has its dangers.
The same may be said of "substance," which apparently means, in this book, much the same as what is ordinarily meant by "matter." Some acknowledgement is made that this notion is now often regarded as questionable, but arguments are advanced to show that nevertheless substance is unavoidable.
"If Heraclitus and modern physics are right in telling us that the most stable of the Pyramids is but a mass of events, this truth about substance does not dissolve substance into events that happen nowhere and to nothing. . . . If an event is to have individual identity and a place amongst other events, it must be a change which substance undergoes in one of its parts."
Again, we are told that events must be "things in flux" or "modes of substance." One is reminded of a famous argument of Kant in favour of substance. But when Mr Santayana speaks of those he is criticising as assuming events that happen "nowhere and to nothing," the word "nowhere" is unwarranted, and the words "to nothing" assume doctrines in logic and physics which demand a more elaborate justification than is to be found in this volume.
The book has all Mr Santayana's well-known merits: beauty of style, a truly philosophic temper, a wide survey of history and thought. It is full of sayings that are profound, delightful, or amusing. And it has the great merit of not pretending, by bad arguments, to establish doctrines which we accept on instinct, but cannot hope to prove.
