iverse which the craving for rationality has
elicited from the human mind, the demands of expectancy to be satisfied
have always played a fundamental part. {80} The term set up by
philosophers as primordial has been one which banishes the
incalculable. 'Substance,' for example, means, as Kant says, _das
Beharrliche_, which will be as it has been, because its being is
essential and eternal. And although we may not be able to prophesy in
detail the future phenomena to which the substance shall give rise, we
may set our minds at rest in a general way, when we have called the
substance God, Perfection, Love, or Reason, by the reflection that
whatever is in store for us can never at bottom be inconsistent with
the character of this term; so that our attitude even toward the
unexpected is in a general sense defined. Take again the notion of
immortality, which for common people seems to be the touchstone of
every philosophic or religious creed: what is this but a way of saying
that the determination of expectancy is the essential factor of
rationality? The wrath of science against miracles, of certain
philosophers against the doctrine of free-will, has precisely the same
root,--dislike to admit any ultimate factor in things which may rout
our prevision or upset the stability of our outlook.

Anti-substantialist writers strangely overlook this function in the
doctrine of substance; "If there be such a _substratum_," says Mill,
"suppose it at this instant miraculously annihilated, and let the
sensations continue to occur in the same order, and how would the
_substratum_ be missed? By what signs should we be able to discover
that its existence had terminated? Should we not have as much reason
to believe that it still existed as we now have? And if we should not
then be warranted in believing it, how can we be so now?" Truly
enough, if we have {81} already securely bagged our facts in a certain
order, we can dispense with any further warrant for that order. But
with regard to the facts yet to come the case is far different. It
does not follow that if substance may be dropped from our conception of
the irrecoverably past, it need be an equally empty complication to our
notions of the future. Even if it were true that, for aught we know to
the contrary, the substance might develop at any moment a wholly new
set of attributes, the mere logical form of referring things to a
substance would still (whether rightly or wrongly