yo THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS 



for all, would so occupy, or rather fail to occupy, its instan- 

 taneous " now " and " here," as not to be one even with 

 itself. 



But no one is interested either in pure particulars or in 

 mere universals, or in the impossible adventure of bringing 

 these two kinds of fictions together, except those who are 

 the victims of the mechanical metaphors which set unity 

 against difference. Universal and particular exist only as 

 elements in a system, and disappear when separated. The 

 universe is such a system, nay, it is a system of systems. 

 Every item within it "in each tense fibre feels the one 

 all-conquering lure." Hence we require something better 

 than the see-saw categories of exclusion in order to interpret 

 the world, and we cannot afford to make its unities or 

 universals less real or less true, in any sense, than its 

 particulars and differences. 



But no more can we afford to make the differences less 

 real than the unity, which is the opposite error into which, 

 as I believe, Mr. Bradley has fallen. This is an error which 

 Idealism has always found it difficult to escape. For the 

 main mission of Idealism has been to insist upon the 

 internalising, subjectivising process by which reality comes 

 to be apprehended in the form of experience. In proving 

 that self-consciousness must unite all things, or find all 

 things to be united, in itself ; in destroying dualism, 

 whether of nature and spirit, or of thing and thought, or 

 of real and ideal, or of subject and object, it most easily 

 falls into abstract Mqnism. 



Such an abstract Monism is implied, it seems to me, in 

 the phrase " Reality is Experience" as it is understood by 

 the great body of modern Idealists. As a rule, they do 

 not tell us what they mean by "Experience," and I am 



