substantive-preferring

Updated: May 20, 2025

Still more characteristic is his application of what he calls the 'substantive-preferring principle. He would rather say, 'I give extension to an object, than 'I extend an object. Where a substantive is employed, the idea is 'stationed upon a rock'; if only a verb, the idea is 'like a leaf floating on a stream. A verb, he said, 'slips through your fingers like an eel. The principle corresponds to his 'metaphysics. The universe of thought is made up of a number of separate 'entities' corresponding to nouns-substantive, and when these bundles are distinctly isolated by appropriate nouns, the process of arranging and codifying according to the simple relations indicated by the copula is greatly facilitated.

Leslie Stephen - The English Utilitarians, Volume I.