After these explanations it will be sufficient merely to state formally the proof that substances really exist. It is exceedingly simple, and its force will be appreciated from all that has been said so far: Whatever we become aware of as existing at all must exist either in itself, or by being sustained, supported in existence, in something else in which it inheres. If it exists in itself it is a substance; if not it is an accident, and then the “something else” which supports it, must in turn either exist in itself or in something else. But since an infinite regress in things existing not in themselves but in other things is impossible, we are forced to admit the reality of a mode of being which exists in itself—_viz._ substance. Or, again, we are forced to admit the real existence of accidents—or, if you will, “phenomena” or “appearances”—_i.e._ of realities or modes of being whose nature is manifestly to modify or qualify in some way or other some subject in which they inhere. Can we conceive a _state_ which is not a state of something? a phenomenon or appearance which is not an appearance of something? a vital act which is not an act of a living thing? a sensation, thought, desire, emotion, unless of some conscious being that feels, thinks, desires, experiences the emotion? No; and therefore since such accidental modes of being really exist, there exists also the substantial mode of being in which they inhere. And the experienced realities which verify this notion of “substance” as the “mode of being which exists in itself,” are manifestly _not one but manifold_. Individual “persons” and “things”—men, animals, plants—are all so many really and numerically distinct substances (38). So, too, are the ultimate individual elements in the inorganic universe, whatever these may be (31). Nor does the universal interaction of these individuals on one another, or their manifold forms of interdependence on one another throughout the course of their ever-changing existence and activities, interfere in any way with the substantiality of the mode of being of each. These mutual relations of all sorts, very real and actual as they undoubtedly are, only constitute the universe a _cosmos_, thus endowing it with _unity of order_, but not with _unity of substance_ (27). Let us now meet the objection of Hume: that there is no substantial soul distinct from its acts, that it is only the sum-total of the acts, each of these being a substance. The objection has been repeated in the metaphorical language in which Huxley and Taine speak of the soul, the living soul, as nothing more than a _republic_ of conscious states, or the movement of a _luminous sheaf_ etc. And Locke and Berkeley had already contended that an apple or an orange is nothing more than a collection or sum-total of sensible qualities, so that if we conceive these removed there is nothing left, for beyond these there was nothing there.