ABSTRACT
1. In considering some recent literature of this question, 2 I am strongly impressed with the result that there are two lines of argument to be regarded. 3
The one set of arguments appeals to the fact of existence. It rests upon the proposition that finite individuals are individual existents. Using, then, the unrestricted premiss that all individual existents are ultimate subjects, it applies this conclusion to spiritual finite individuals, together with all existent “things,” including things that are parts of things. I shall suggest that a proof depending on so wide a premiss is precluded from supporting, in a serious sense, the thesis that spiritual finite individuals possess substantive or substantival being.
The other set of arguments appeals to the intentional character of spiritual finite beings as such—to their pretensions and their implications—a question of unity as an object or ideal rather than as a subject. It deals with such matters as the self in morality and religion, with its pretension to assert a unity which it does not find existent, to be free and responsible, to remain itself even in the social bond or in oneness with God. A conclusion from such considerations would be strictly applicable to the finite spiritual individual. But I shall urge that from such considerations the conclusion must be that which I advocate, and not that which is advanced against me. The spiritual individual has a solid claim to substantive being only indirectly, and through an admission and recognition that his immediate self is of a nature which, to speak in terms of the antithesis before us, cannot be called substantive, and must by preference be set down as adjectival.
