ABSTRACT

Although Locke confessed that his idea of a substratum was very obscure and imperfect, he thought that such things must exist because qualities exist. Qualities, he reasoned, are attributes, and attributes are things attributable to a subject. A substratum is simply a subject of attributes - something in which the attributes of a single thing are united: they "inhere" in it, and it "supports" them. If Berkeley was right in thinking that a thing's ultimate qualities (the qualities underlying and accounting for its observable powers) exist only in some mind, then the fact that a thing has a quality would not imply that a mind-independent substratum exists. Berkeley saw this point clearly,53 but he opposed the conclusion with additional arguments. According to one, the conclusion is baseless, lacking all positive support; according to the other, it is inherently false or else meaningless.