surely they contribute to it all there is ‘of’ it!] seem irrational throughout. [
If ‘irrational’ here means simply ‘non-rational,’ or non-deducible from the essence of either term singly, it is no reproach; if it means ‘contradicting’ such essence, Mr. Bradley should show wherein and how.] But, if they contribute anything, they must surely be affected internally. [
Why so, if they contribute only their surface? In such relations as ‘on,’ ‘a foot away,’ ‘between,’ ‘next,’ etc., only surfaces are in question.] … If the terms contribute anything whatever, then the terms are affected [
inwardly altered?] by the arrangement. … That for working purposes we treat, and do well to treat, some relations as external merely, I do not deny, and that of course is not the question at issue here. That question is … whether in the end and in principle a mere external relation [
i.e., a relation which can change without forcing its terms to change their nature simultaneously] is possible and forced on us by the facts.”63
Mr. Bradley next reverts to the antinomies of space, which, according to him, prove it to be unreal, although it appears as so prolific a medium of external relations; and he then concludes that “Irrationality and externality cannot be the last truth about things. Somewhere there must be a reason why this and that appear together. And this reason and reality must reside in the whole from which terms and relations are abstractions, a whole in which their internal connection must lie, and out of which from the background appear those fresh results which never could have come from the premises” (p. 577). And he adds that “Where the whole is different, the terms that qualify and contribute to it must so far be different. … They are altered so far only [how far? farther than externally, yet not through and through?
], but still they are altered. … I must insist that in each case the terms are qualified by their whole [qualified how?—do their external relations, situations, dates, etc., changed as these are in the new whole, fail to qualify them ‘far’ enough?
], and that in the second case there is a whole which differs both logically and psychologically from the first whole; and I urge that in contributing to the change the terms so far are altered” (p. 579).
Not merely the relations, then, but the terms are altered: und zwar “so far.” But just how far is the whole problem; and “through-and-through” would seem (in spite of Mr. Bradley’s somewhat undecided utterances64) to be the full Bradleyan answer. The “whole” which he here treats as primary and determinative of each part’s manner of “contributing,” simply must, when it alters, alter in its entirety. There must be total conflux of its parts, each into and through each other. The “must” appears here as a Machtspruch, as an ipse dixit of Mr. Bradley’s absolutistically tempered “understanding,” for he candidly confesses that how the parts do differ as they contribute to different wholes, is unknown to him (p. 578).
Although I have every wish to comprehend the authority by which Mr. Bradley’s understanding speaks, his words leave me wholly unconverted. “External relations” stand with their withers all unwrung, and remain, for aught he proves to the contrary, not only practically workable, but also perfectly intelligible factors of reality.
VI
Mr. Bradley’s understanding shows the most extraordinary power of perceiving separations and the most extraordinary impotence in comprehending conjunctions. One would naturally say “neither or both,” but not so Mr. Bradley. When a common man analyzes certain whats from out the stream of experience, he understands their distinctness as thus isolated. But this does not prevent him from equally well understanding their combination with each other as originally experienced in the concrete, or their confluence with new sensible experiences in which they recur as “the same.” Returning into the stream of sensible presentation, nouns and adjectives, and thats and abstract whats, grow confluent again, and the word “is” names all these experiences of conjunction. Mr. Bradley understands the isolation of the abstracts, but to understand the combination is to him impossible.65 “To understand a complex AB,” he says, “I must begin with A or B. And beginning, say with A, if I then merely find B, I have either lost A, or I have got beside A, [the word ‘beside’ seems here vital, as meaning a conjunction ‘external’ and therefore unintelligible
] something else, and in neither case have I understood.66 For my intellect cannot simply unite a diversity, nor has it in itself any form or way of togetherness, and you gain nothing if, beside A and B, you offer me their conjunction in fact. For to my intellect that is no more than another external element. And ‘facts,’ once for all, are for my intellect not true unless they satisfy it. … The intellect has in its nature no principle of mere togetherness” (pp. 570, 572).
Of course Mr. Bradley has a right to define “intellect” as the power by which we perceive separations but not unions—provided he give due notice to the reader. But why then claim that such a maimed and amputated power must reign supreme in philosophy, and
