ABSTRACT
This chapter shows qualities and properties are very different sort of entities, and that a neglect of the difference between them is in large measure responsible for the persistence of the controversy between idealism and realism. The two radically different senses, appears sufficient in all cases to interpret the assertion 'This tree is green', will be examined. In philosophical discussions, such simple statements as 'This tree is green', 'The table in my study is brown', etc., are frequently used as examples of information, obtained by perception, concerning attributes of material things. In spite of the fact that this statement is verbally different from the other, the very same directly intuited colour-quality is obviously indicated by the subject terms of the two; and it is this colour-quality that either of them asserts to be the colour called green. To elucidate further the interpretation of the statement, it is necessary to analyse in some detail the nature of a property.
