F. H. Bradley

“ I might very well, for instance, have started with the self as a given unity, and have asked how far any other things are real otherwise, and how far again the self satisfies its own demands on reality. ”

“ Thought has now been taken, that is, to include so much more than truth in the narrow sense, that the old question as to how truth in this sense stands to reality, must break out more or less within thought itself. ”

“ But on the other hand, because everything, to complete itself and to satisfy its own claims, must pass beyond itself, nothing in the end is real except the Absolute. Everything else is appearance; it is that the character of which goes beyond its own existence, is inconsistent with it and transcends it. ”

“ I have contended that starting from the self one can advance to a positive result beyond it, and my contention surely is not met by such a bare unreasoned assumption of its falsity. And if finally I hear, Well, you yourself admit that the Absolute is unintelligible; why then object to saying that the Absolute somehow unintelligibly is self and the self is somehow unintelligibly absolute?—that gives me no trouble. For the Absolute, though in detail unintelligible, is not so in general, and its general character comes as a consequence from a necessary principle. ”

“ We should have seen that each really is based on, and is an attempt to realize, the same principle, a principle which is not wholly satisfied by any, and which condemns each because each is an inadequate appearance of itself.
VIII. I must now touch briefly on a point of greater difficulty. Why, it has been asked, have I not identified the Absolute with the Self? Now, as I have already remarked, my whole view may be taken as based on the self; nor again could I doubt that a self, or a system of selves, is the highest thing that we have. ”

“ For every view of the world, we must all agree, has its own special difficulties. Where, for instance, from a theistic or a Christian point of view a writer condemns, say, a “naturalistic” account of good and evil—would that writer, if he had a desire for fairness and truth, fail to recall the fact that his own view also has been morally condemned? ”

“ It is therefore impossible to apply the notion of Degrees of Truth and Reality. If all appearances are equally contradictory, all are equally incapable of aiding us to get nearer to the ultimate nature of Reality.” And it is added that on this point there seems to be a consensus of opinion among my critics. ”

“ Surely if you view perfection and completeness in one way, it is a case of either Yes or No, you have either reached it or not, and there either is defect or there is none. But in the imperfect, viewed otherwise, there is already more or less of a quality or character, the self-same character which, if all defect were removed, would attain to and itself would be perfection. ”

“ VI. With regard to the unity of the Absolute we know that the Absolute must be one, because anything experienced is experienced in or as a whole, and because anything like independent plurality or external relations cannot satisfy the intellect. And it fails to satisfy the intellect because it is a self-contradiction. Again for the same reason the Absolute is one system in the very highest sense of that term, any lower sense being unreal because in the end self-contradictory. ”

“ A theory may contain what is unintelligible, so long as it really contains it; and not to know how a thing can be is no disproof of our knowing that it both must be and is. The whole question is whether we have a general principle under which the details can and must fall, or whether, on the other hand, the details fall outside or are negative instances which serve to upset the principle. Now I have argued in detail that there are no facts which fall outside the principle or really are negative instances ”

“ But suppose that in theology I say that all men before God, and measured by him, are equally sinful—does that preclude me from also holding that one is worse or better than another? And if I accept the fact of degrees in virtue, may I not believe also that virtue is one and is perfection and that you must attain to it or not? ”

“ Practical beliefs, we know, are regulated by working efficiency. They emphasize one point here, and they suppress another point there, without much care to avoid a theoretical self-contradiction. And working beliefs of any kind, I imagine, can more or less exist under and together with any kind of theoretical doctrine. The comparison I have in view here is of another order, and would be made between doctrines each of which claimed to be a true and consistent account of the whole of things. ”

“ According to the doctrine of this work that which is highest to us is also in and to the Universe most real, and there can be no question of its reality being somehow upset. In common-place Materialism, on the other hand, that which in the end is real is certainly not what we think highest, this latter being a secondary and, for all we know, a precarious result of the former. ”

“ And viewed intellectually appearance is error. But the remedy lies in supplementation by inclusion of that which is both outside and yet essential, and in the Absolute this remedy is perfected. There is no mere appearance or utter chance or absolute error, but all is relative. And the degree of reality is measured by the amount of supplementation required in each case, and by the extent to which the completion of anything entails its own destruction as such. ”

“ And again, if we embrace mere ignorance, we are in the position that, for anything we know, our highest beliefs are illusions, or at any moment may become so, and at any moment may be brought to nought by something—we do not know what. And I submit that the difference between such doctrines and those of this work is really considerable. ”

“ There are some mistakes and failures to comprehend of an ordinary type, coupled with some mere dogmatism of an uninteresting kind. And it is to myself a matter of regret that generally in this point I have been helped so little by my critics, and am compelled (if I may use the expression) still to do most of my scepticism for myself. [4]
X. The doctrine of this work has been condemned as failing to satisfy the claims of our nature, and has been charged with being after all no better than “Agnosticism.” ”

“ In a question about the satisfaction of our nature all the aspects of that nature must first be set forth, and not a one-sided distortion of these or an arbitrary selection from them. And in the second place every side of the doctrines compared must be stated without suppression of any features that may be found inconvenient. ”

“ But with this we are left, it appears, in a dilemma. There is a difference between on the one side truth or thought (it will be convenient now to identify these) , and on the other side reality. But to assert this difference seems impossible without somehow transcending thought or bringing the difference into thought, and these phrases seem meaningless. Thus reality appears to be an Other different from truth and yet not able to be truly taken as different ”

“ Erschüttert wird ein Lehrsatz durch eine neue Beobachtung nur dann, wenn sich zeigen lässt, dass sie ihm geradezu widerspricht. ↑ I may mention here that to a criticism of this work by Mr. Ward, in Mind, N. S., No. 9, I, perhaps hastily, replied in the next number of that journal. I should doubt if in the criticism or the reply anything calls for the reader’s attention, but, if he desires to see them, I have given the reference. ”