F. H. Bradley

“ To unite without an internal ground of connection and distinction is to strive to bring together barely in the same point, and that is self-contradiction.
Things are not contrary because they are opposite, for things by themselves are not opposite. And things are not contrary because they are diverse, for the world as a fact holds diversity in unity. ”

“ From the other side—Why do I hold reality to be a self-contained and self-consistent individual? It is because otherwise, if I admit an external determination and a qualification by an other, I am left with a conjunction, and that for the intellect is a self-contradiction. On the other hand the real cannot be simple, because, to be understood, it must somehow be taken with and be qualified by the diversity which is a fact. The diversity therefore must fall within and be subordinate to a self-determined whole, an individual system, and any other determination is incompatible with reality. ”

“ 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. And, so far as they are not true, then, as they are offered, they are not reality. ”

“ Things are contrary when, being diverse, they strive to be united in one point which in itself does not admit of internal diversity. And for the intellect any bare conjunction is an attempt of this sort. The intellect has in its nature no principle of mere togetherness, and the intellect again can accept nothing which is alien to itself. A foreign togetherness of elements is for the intellect, therefore, but one offered external element the more. And, since the intellect demands a unity, every distinguishable aspect of a “together” must be brought into one. ”

“ The intellect cannot be reduced to choose between accepting an irrational conjunction or rejecting something given. For the intellect can always accept the conjunction not as bare but as a connection, the bond of which is at present unknown. ”

“ For thought’s analysis can respect nothing, nor is there any principle by which at a certain point it should arrest itself or be arrested. Every distinguishable aspect becomes therefore for thought a diverse element to be brought to unity. Hence thought can no more pass without a reason from A or from B to its conjunction, than before it could pass groundlessly from A to B. The transition, being offered as a mere datum, or effected as a mere fact, is not thought’s own self-movement. ”

“ While the diversities are external to each other and to their union, ultimate satisfaction is impossible. There must, as we have seen, be an identity and in that identity a ground of distinction and connection. But that ground, if external to the elements into which the conjunction must be analyzed, becomes for the intellect a fresh element, and it itself calls for synthesis in a fresh point of unity. But hereon, because in the intellect no intrinsic connections were found, ensues the infinite process. ”

“ Every perceived complex is a selection from an indefinite background, and, when judged as real, it is predicated both of this background and of the Reality which transcends it. Hence in this background and beyond it lies, we may believe, the reason and the internal connection of all we take as a mere external “together.” Conjunction and contradiction in short is but our defect, our onesidedness, and our abstraction, and it is appearance and not Reality. But the reason we have to assume may in detail be not accessible to our intellect. ”

“ Hence any mere context cannot modify a truth so far as it is true. It merely adds, we must say, something more which leaves the truth itself unaffected. Truth cannot be modified, in other words, except from within. This of course opens a problem, for truth seems on the one hand to be abstract, as truth, and so incomplete, and on the other hand, if true, to be self-contained and even self-existent. ”

“ The thesis in the first place does not imply that the end which we seek is tautology. Thought most certainly does not demand mere sameness, which to it would be nothing. A bare tautology (Hegel has taught us this, and I wish we could all learn it) is not even so much as a poor truth or a thin truth. It is not a truth in any way, in any sense, or at all. Thought involves analysis and synthesis, and if the Law of Contradiction forbade diversity, it would forbid thinking altogether. ”

“ The identity of which diversities are predicated is in no case simple. There is no point which is not itself internally the transition to its complement, and there is no unity which fails in internal diversity and ground of distinction. In short “the identity of opposites,” far from conflicting with the Law of Contradiction, may claim to be the one view which satisfies its demands, the only theory which everywhere refuses to accept a standing contradiction. ”

“ For what are “opposites” except the adjectives which the thing cannot so combine? Hence we have said no more than that we in fact find predicates which in fact will not go together, and our further introduction of their “opposite” nature seems to add nothing. “Opposites will not unite, and their apparent union is mere appearance.” ”

“ In this attempt to attribute diversity and to avoid contradiction what in the end would satisfy the intellect supposing that it could be got? This question, I venture to think, is too often ignored. Too often a writer will criticise and condemn some view as being that which the mind cannot accept, when he apparently has never asked himself what it is that would satisfy the intellect, or even whether the intellect could endure his own implied alternative. ”

“ And if all that we find were in the end such a self-evident and self-complete whole, containing in itself as constituent processes the detail of the Universe, so far as I see the intellect would receive satisfaction in full. ”

“ An abstraction cuts away a mass of environing particulars, and offers the residue bare, as something given and to be accepted free from supporting conditions. And for working purposes such an artifice is natural and necessary, but to offer it as ultimate fact seems to me to be monstrous. We have an intellectual product, to be logically justified, if indeed that could be possible, and most certainly we have not a genuine datum. ”

“ The soul cannot affirm and deny at a single time, unless (as some perhaps rightly hold) the self itself may be divided. And, to speak in general, the more narrowly we take the subject, and the less internal ground for diversity it contains, the more it threatens us with standing or insoluble contradictions. ”

“ The conjunction is hence not bare but dependent, and it is really a connection mediated by something falling outside it. A thing, for example, with its adjectives can never be simply given. It is given integrally with a mass of other features, and when it is affirmed of Reality it is affirmed of Reality qualified by this presented background. And this Reality (to go further) is and must be qualified also by what transcends any one presentation. Hence the mere complex, alleged to be given to the intellect, is really a selection made by or accepted by that intellect. ”

“ And on the other hand, by its own nature, thought must hold these in unity. But, in a bare conjunction, starting with A thought will externally be driven to B, and seeking to unite these it will find no ground of union. Thought can of itself supply no internal bond by which to hold them together, nor has it any internal diversity by which to maintain them apart. It must therefore seek barely to identify them, though they are different, or somehow to unite both diversities where it has no ground of distinction and union. ”

“ The principles taken up are not merely in themselves not rational, but, being limited, they remain external to the facts to be explained. The diversities therefore will only fall, or rather must be brought, under the principle. They do not come out of it, nor of themselves do they bring themselves under it. The explanation therefore in the end does but conjoin aliens inexplicably. The obvious instance is the mechanical interpretation of the world. Even if here the principles were rational intrinsically, as surely they are not, they express but one portion of a complex whole. ”

“ The Law of Contradiction tells us that we must not simply identify the diverse, since their union involves a ground of distinction. So far as this ground is rightly or wrongly excluded, the Law forbids us to predicate diversities. ”

“ And, since diversities exist, they must therefore somehow be true and real; and since, to be understood and to be true and real, they must be united, hence they must be true and real in such a way that from A or B the intellect can pass to its further qualification without an external determination of either. ”

“ Standing contradictions appear where the subject is narrowed artificially, and where diversity in the identity is taken as excluded. A thing cannot be at once in two places if in the “at once” there is no lapse, nor can one place have two bodies at once if both claim it in their character as extended. ”

“ But so far as for convenience or from thoughtlessness the denial is made, and the real thing is identified with our mutilated and abstract view of the thing—so far the disparate qualities logically clash and become contradictory. ”