Now, keeping this in mind, are universals, as Plato asserts, substances? No; because the universal is merely a common predicate which attaches to many objects of a class. Thus the concept of man is merely what is common to all men. It is the same thing as the predicate "humanness." But humanness cannot exist apart from human beings, any more than heaviness apart from the heavy object. Universals, then, are not substances. But neither are particulars substances. For there is no such thing as that which is absolutely {266} particular and isolated. If humanness does not exist apart from men, neither do men exist apart from humanness. Take away from a man what he has in common with other men, and what he has in common with other objects, and you will find that, having stripped him of all his qualities, there is absolutely nothing left. We say gold is heavy, yellow, malleable, etc. Now the heaviness, the yellowness, and the other qualities, cannot exist apart from the gold. But it is equally true that the gold cannot exist apart from its qualities. Strip off all its qualities in thought, and then ask yourself what the gold itself is apart from its qualities. You will find that your mind is a total blank. In taking away the qualities you have taken away the gold itself. The gold can only be thought through its qualities. It only exists through its qualities. The gold, therefore, just as much depends on the qualities for its existence as the qualities depend upon the gold. Hence neither of them, considered apart from the other, is substance. But the qualities are the universal element in the gold, the gold without the qualities is the absolutely particular and isolated. For, first, the yellowness is a quality which this gold has in common with that gold, and is therefore a universal, and so with all the qualities. Even if a particular piece of gold has a quality possessed by no other gold, it is yet possessed by some other object in the universe, or it would be unknowable. Every quality is consequently a universal. Secondly, the gold without its qualities is the absolutely particular. For, being stripped of all qualities, it is stripped of whatever it has in common with other things; it is stripped of whatever universality it has, and it remains an absolute particular. Hence the {267} universal is not substance, nor is the particular. For neither of them can exist without the other. Substance must be a compound of the two; it must be the universal in the particular. And this means that that alone which is substance is the individual object, for example, the gold with all its qualities attached to it.