190 HUMANISM 



XI 



method unendurable. If only he had exempted a few 

 trifles, like religion and morality, from this reduction to 

 illusion, we might have tolerated his onslaughts on the 

 abstractions of metaphysics ; as it is, there is nothing that 

 can withstand the onset of his awful Absolute. 



Now if anything of the sort had happened to a 

 philosophic argument of my own, I should have been 

 appalled. I should have felt that something had gone 

 wrong, that some secret source of error must have sprung 

 up somewhere, or that I must somehow have misunder 

 stood my principle. If the result of my intellectual 

 manipulations of the world had been to convict it of 

 radical absurdity, I should have regarded this as a 

 reflection, not on the universe, but on the method I had 

 used. I should have felt I had failed intellectually, 

 and must try again in another way. 1 I should never 

 have dared to condemn the universe in reliance on so 

 tenuous an argument from so narrow a basis. In the 

 last resort I might even have doubted the validity of my 

 principle. I should certainly have doubted its application. 

 Mr. Bradley, apparently, is exempt from any such scruples, 

 but, at the risk of making a deplorable exhibition of the 

 crassest common-sense, I must submit that a system 

 which culminates in so huge a paradox thereby discredits 

 its foundations. And so Mr. Bradley s final Ascension 

 from the sphere of Appearances and Reception into the 

 bosom of the Absolute reminds me of nothing so much 

 as of the fabled rope-trick of the Indian jugglers. 



Ill 



Only a strong conviction of its necessity, together 

 with a habit of outspokenness learnt from Mr. Bradley s 



appearances (Appear, and Real. pp. 362, 364, 369. etc., first ed. ), and Mr. 

 Bradley makes no attempt to show how the reality of appearances can be re 

 habilitated by a reversion to points of view which themselves are appearances. 

 It is as though to atone for his haste in calling all men liars, the psalmist had 

 proceeded to accept the testimony of the most egregious liars to the veracity 01 

 the rest. 



1 Mr. Bradley s critical canon is apparently the reverse of this. E.g. in dis 

 cussing the sense in which the self is real, he argues that &quot; if none defensible can 

 be found, such a failure, I must insist, ought to end the question.&quot; App. and 

 Real. p. 76. 



