matter as the ‘substratum’ underlying the prope rties and relations of the
individual, on the other hand he treats the individual as the parti cularization
of the universal, so that the matter out of which the individual is formed is
not inaccessible to thought:
According to [the first view], ‘matter’ is constituted by the individual things
which ‘are nearest the sense,’ and from which thought abstracts the
properties which constitute the ‘form’ or species. By a further abstraction
of properties the ‘genus’ – ultimately the ‘summum genus’ – is arrived at,
which thus stands at the end of the process farthest from ‘matter.’ In the
‘Metaphysics,’ on the other hand, the ‘summum genus’ itself appears as the
‘matter’ which is formed by successive differentiae till the most determinate
complex of attributes has been reached. Here we see that matter has changed
places.
80
As a result of this turn-around, Green argues, ‘[t]he process of thought
appears as one not of abstraction but of concretion’, for now the individual
is no longer a bare unit, but a unity of differences, a centre of manifold
relations, a subject of properties. It is not an ‘abstract universal’, but it has an
element of universality in virtue of which it can be brought into relation to all
things else. Its universality is the condition of its particularisation.
81
Despite what he takes to be the nominalistic tendencies of the Aristotelian
position, therefore, Green also sees in it the seeds of somet hing more like the
conception we have found in Hegel, where he makes clear that he shares this
conception, and that the correct picture is one that views universality and
individuality as mutually dependent notions:
‘Substance,’ as the outward thing . . . is individual or exclusive of all things but
itself; otherwise it would be no object of definite knowledge. But it is not
merely individual. If it were, it would be, as it is sometimes presented to us by
Aristotle, an indeterminate, and therefore unknowable ‘matter’. . . It is an
individual universalised through its particular relations or qualities. Here
again the process may be reversed. If there is no universal element in things
known, there can be no unity of knowledge or community of thought. But this
universal is not merely such. If it were ‘ever the same,’ so as to be void of all
distinction, like the shadowy goal of the Platonic dialectic, it would be, as it in
turn is exhibited by Aristotle, the indeterminate and unknowable. It must be
that which is the negation of all particular relations so as to be determined by
the sum of them. In virtue of this negative relation, as identical with itself in
exclusion of all things, it is individual. It is a universal individualized through
its particularity. Thus we see that the pr
otZ osı
´
a, or individual substance,
80
Ibid.
81
Ibid., 63.
148 ROBERT STERN
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