xi ON PRESERVING APPEARANCES 189 



underivable for a philosophy which makes a point of 



honour of systematically denying the factual, and labours 



vainly to reduce all immediate acquaintance with to 



discursive knowledge about. And lastly, (4) if the 



worst should come to the worst, the solution ambulando 



which in this instance we may translate by going on 



is always open to a philosophy which has not wantonly 



insisted on closing the last door to hope by assuming the 



unreality of time (i.e. of the experience-process). 1 



For these reasons then I am forced to conclude that 

 Mr. Bradley, in appealing to the principle that the Real 

 is not self-contradictory, has not succeeded in expressing 

 it in its complete and ultimate form. His absolute 

 criterion is not the whole, but a part of the greater 

 principle of Harmony. And inasmuch as our experience 

 is plainly not as yet harmonious, it is clear that the 

 principle is a Postulate. We must conceive the Real 

 to be harmonious, not because we have any formal and 

 a priori assurance of the fact, but because we desire it to 

 be so and are willing to try whether it cannot become so. 



(2) My second charge can be dealt with more sum 

 marily. It concerns the immense disproportion between 

 the foundation of Mr. Bradley s system and the super 

 structure he has built upon it. Mr. Bradley argues from 

 his absolute criterion to the conclusion that everything 

 which is ordinarily esteemed real, everything which any 

 one can know or care about, is pervaded with unreality, 

 is mere appearance in a greater or less degree of 

 degradation. 2 In this Mr. Bradley appears to carry the 

 policy of thorough to an excess which renders his whole 



1 Cp. p. 109. 



2 I cannot here criticise this doctrine of degrees as fully as it deserves. It 

 appears to be the only obstacle to our accounting Mr. Bradley s philosophy the 

 purest scepticism (or rather nihilism), but I cannot but regard it as thoroughly 

 indefensible, and even unintelligible. For, as Mr. H. V. Knox has pointed out 

 to me, it seems impossible even to state it without recurring to a number of the 

 lower categories which Mr. Bradley had previously invalidated. Otherwise the 

 consideration of the different amounts of rearrangement required for the con 

 version of appearances into the Absolute, of the greater or less intervals 

 separating them from it, of the varying lengths of time needed to see through an 

 appearance, would seem to be simply irrelevant, and unable to establish the 

 distinctions of kind among appearances which are aimed at. Yet strangely 

 enough, Time, Space, and Quantity have themselves been written down as mere 



