A distinction (chap. 2) is drawn between things which are predicates of a subject (Kae' U?oKEi b tevov) and things which inhere in a subject (iv U7roKEL ivC J); and, while universals are called predicates of a subject, things in a subordinate category, i.e.
It is true that the work gives only a negative definition of the inherent, namely, that it does not inhere as a part and cannot exist apart from that in which it inheres (1 a 24-25), and it admits that what is inherent may sometimes also be a predicate (chap. 5, 2 a 27-34).
If one were to ask him what the substance is in which this colour and that taste or smell inhere, " he would find himself in a difficulty like that of the Indian, who, after saying that the world rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a broad-backed tortoise, could only suppose the tortoise to rest on ` Something, I know not what.'
Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple or individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion among them, there would be no difficulty in the case" (App. to Treatise of Human Nature).
Trace out the clue of causation to the end, says Hegel in effect, and it introduces you, not to a single first cause beyond nature, but to the totality of natural process - a substance, as it were, in which all causes inhere.