Nevertheless, the notion of “substance”, at any rate in any sense involving permanence, must be shut out from our thoughts if we are to achieve a philosophy in any way adequate either to modern physics or to modern psychology. Modern physics, both in the theory of relativity and in the Heisenberg-Schrödinger theories of atomic structure, has reduced “matter” to a system of events, each of which lasts only for a very short time. To treat an electron or a proton as a single entity has become as wrong-headed as it would be to treat the population of London or New York as a single entity. And in psychology, equally, the “ego” has disappeared as an ultimate conception, and the unity of a personality has become a peculiar causal nexus among a series of events. In this respect, grammar and ordinary language have been shown to be bad guides to metaphysics. A great book might be written showing the influence of syntax on philosophy; in such a book, the author could trace in detail the influence of the subject-predicate structure of sentences upon European thought, more particularly in this matter of “substance”. And it must be understood that the same reasons which lead to the rejection of substance lead also to the rejection of “things” and “persons” as ultimately valid concepts. I say “I sit at my table”, but I ought to say: “One of a certain string of events causally connected in the sort of way that makes the whole series that is called a ‘person’ has a certain spatial relation to one of another string of events causally connected with each other in a different way and having a spatial configuration of the sort denoted by the word ‘table’”. I do not say so, because life is too short; but that is what I should say if I were a true philosopher. Apart from any other grounds, the inadequacy of the notion of “substance” would lead us to regard the philosophy of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz as incompatible with modern science. There is of course in all three, a great deal that does not depend upon “substance”, and that still has value; but “substance” supplied the framework and a good deal of the argumentation, and therefore introduces a fatal defect into these three great systems. I come now to the triad of British philosophers, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume--English, Irish, and Scotch respectively. Perhaps from patriotic bias or from community of national temperament, I find more that I can accept, and regard as still important, in the writings of these three than in the philosophy of their continental predecessors. Their constructions are less ambitious, their arguments more detailed, and their methods more empirical; in all these respects they show more kinship with the modern scientific outlook. On the other hand, Locke and Hume, if not Berkeley, approach philosophy too exclusively from the side of psychology, and are concerned to study Man rather than the universe.