What is a thing?

So what is a thing?

If one says of a tree, “this is a tree” one might point at the trunk and say is this a tree? No this is a trunk. And the same for the branches and the leaves and the roots. Each of these is what it is, and it is not a tree. Yet put them together and they make a new thing – which is not to be found in any of them – which is the tree. A tree is not a substantial thing – it is a spirit which inhabits the assembly of its parts. Not so primitive the animism of the uncivilised then for it is more realistic than our own material view. Names are for spirits which are wholly illusory!

So what of a thing’s properties like its size. As a child we might have thought the distance to school was far. But as an adult returning to the village in which we were brought up we find actually it is small. Size is relative. The big thing against a bigger thing embodies the quality of small. But that same embodiment becomes big against a small thing.

All that remains are the sensory qualities like colour and texture. These are real.