F. H. Bradley

“ Every sort of whole, and certainly every arrangement in space, has a qualitative aspect. In various respects the whole has a character—even its figure may here be included—which cannot be shown to consist barely in mere terms and mere relations between them. You may say that this character belongs to them, but it still is more than what they are by themselves. And if things in space by a new arrangement produce a fresh aspect of quality, of what, I would ask, are you going to predicate this quality? If the terms contribute anything whatever, then the terms are affected by their arrangement. ”

“ And just as in this sense there are no mere spatial relations without concrete terms, so in another sense also there is nothing barely spatial. The terms and the relations between them are themselves mere abstractions from a more concrete qualitative unity. Neither the things in space nor their space, nor both together, can be taken as substantial. They are abstractions depending on a more concrete whole which they fail to express. And their apparent externality is itself a sign that we have in them appearance and not ultimate reality. ”

“ For myself I am convinced that no such relations exist. There is no identity or likeness possible except in a whole, and every such whole must qualify and be qualified by its terms. And, where the whole is different, the terms that qualify it and contribute to it must so far be different, and so far therefore by becoming elements in a fresh unity the terms must be altered. They are altered so far only, but still they are altered. You may take by abstraction a quality A, B, or C, and that abstract quality may throughout remain unchanged. ”

“ Identity must be taken as having a development through several stages. At a certain stage no identity is relational, while at a higher stage all is so. And because in the Absolute the highest stage is actually realized, therefore we may, where convenient, treat identity as being already a relation, when actually for us it is not one. This statement I will now proceed to explain briefly.
We have seen that as a fact sameness exists at a stage below relations. It exists as an aspect both of a diversity felt in my mind and again of a diversity taken to exist beyond my feeling. ”

“ Nothing in the whole and in the end can be external, and everything less than the Universe is an abstraction from the whole, an abstraction more or less empty, and the more empty the less self-dependent. Relations and qualities are abstractions, and depend for their being always on a whole, a whole which they inadequately express, and which remains always less or more in the background. ”

“ 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. The merely external is, in short, our ignorance set up as reality, and to find it anywhere, except as an inconsistent aspect of fact, we have seen is impossible. ”

“ Now 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 in short whether this distinction of internal and external is absolute or is but relative, and whether in the end and in principle a mere external relation is possible and forced on us by the facts. And except as a subordinate view I submit that the latter thesis is untenable. ”

“ But without exception no sameness reaches its truth and final reality except in the Whole which is beyond relations and which carries out what they attempt. And in the main the way of relations is the necessary mode of progress from that which is incomplete to its perfection. All sameness then not only may but must become relational, or at least must be realized in the same end and on the same principle as would have perfected it if it had passed through relational identity. ”

“ All relations, we have seen, are the inadequate expression of an underlying unity. The relational stage is an imperfect and incomplete development of the immediate totality. But, on the other hand, it really is a development. It is an advance and a necessary step towards that perfection which is above relations, supersedes and still includes them. Hence in the Absolute, where all is complete, we are bound to hold that every development reaches its end—whatever that end may be, and in whatever sense we are to say the thing comes to it. ”

“ They are not given except as contained in and as qualifying some whole, and their independence consists merely in our vicious abstraction. Nor when we pass to the relational stage does diversity cease to be the inseparable adjective of unity. For the relations themselves cannot exist except within and as the adjectives of an underlying unity. The whole that is analyzed into relations and terms can fall into the background and be obscured, but it can never be dissipated. ”

“ For example, a red-haired man who knew himself utterly would and must, starting from within, go on to know everyone else who has red hair, and he would not know himself until he knew them. But, as things are, he does not know how or why he himself has red hair, nor how or why a different man is also the same in that point, and therefore, because he does not know the ground, the how and why, of his relation to the other man, it remains for him relatively external, contingent, and fortuitous. ”

“ And if you urge that in any case the relation of the thing’s character to its spatial existence is unintelligible, and that how the nature of the thing which falls outside our abstraction contributes to the whole system, and how that nature is different as it contributes differently, is in the end unknown—I shall not gainsay you. ”

“ Things may be the same, it is said, but not related until you compare them, and their relations then fall quite outside and do not qualify them. Two men with red hair for example, it may be urged, are either not related at all by their sameness, or when related by it are not altered, and the relation therefore is quite external. Now if I suggest that possibly all the red-haired men in a place might be ordered to be collected and destroyed, I shall be answered, I presume, that their red hair does not affect them directly, and though I think this answer unsatisfactory, I will pass on. ”

“ Such knowledge is out of our reach, and it is perhaps out of the reach of any mind that has to think relationally. But if in the Absolute knowledge is perfected, as we conclude it is, then in a higher form the end of such knowledge is actually realized, and with ignorance and chance the last show of externality has vanished. ”

“ The billiard-ball, to repeat, if taken apart from its place and its position in the whole, is not an existence but a character, and that character can remain unchanged, though the existing thing is altered with its changed existence. ”

“ The goal of every progress therefore may be taken as already attained in Reality and as now present and actual. I do not mean that without exception all immediate sameness must pass through the relational consciousness. ”

“ Anything that is somewhat at all may be said to be or to have a quality. But on the other hand we may prefer to use quality specially of those diversities which are developed when wholes are analyzed into terms and relations. And, when we ask if there can be qualities without relations, this distinction becomes important. ”

“ If we begin by considering the form of spatial arrangement, we seem to find at first complete real externality. All the points there are terms which may be taken indifferently in every kind of arrangement, and the relations seem indifferent and merely outward. ”

“ As to that apparent externality there can be no doubt. Why this thing is here and not there, what the connection is in the end between spatial position and the quality that holds it and is determined by it, remains unknown. In mechanical explanation generally the connection of the elements with the laws—even if the laws themselves were rational—remains unknown and external, and the reason why the results follow from the premises is admitted at a certain point to be left outside. ”

“ But it will be objected on the part of Common Sense that we must keep to the facts. The billiard-balls on a table may be in any position you please, and you and I and another may be changed respectively in place, and yet none of these things by these changes is altered in itself. ”