MINE AND THINE 71 



inclined to say that their best refuge lies in obscurity. 

 They seem to have substituted this vague term " Experi- 

 ence" for the word "Thought," into which, as they 

 believe, Hegel had evaporated reality. " Reality is richer 

 than thought," they say; and "this reality, richer than 

 thought, is experience." 1 Thought is abstract, general, 

 the manifestation of only one aspect, and that a secondary 

 aspect, of mind. It contains neither feeling nor volition, 

 and it satisfies no one except the bloodless " Intellectualist." 

 But " Experience " comprehends thought and more. It is 

 original and all-inclusive. Thought produces at best a 

 mere image of reality, a solemn shadow-land of intercon- 

 nected notions, a still, dead world of mere ideas. But 

 experience is concrete, living. It is an activity, and an 

 activity that has emotional value and active purpose as well 

 as meaning. Experience is adequate to reality : reality is 

 experience. 



With this indefinite and figurative contrast between 

 "thought" and "experience" most Idealists are content. 

 But Mr. Bradley has no faith in obscurity, and brings his 

 conclusions to the open. He tells us what he means by 

 the "Experience" with which he identifies "Reality." 

 ' ' Experience means something much the same as given and 

 present fact. We perceive, on reflection, that to be real, 

 or even barely to exist, must be to fall within sentience. 

 Sentient experience, in short, is reality, and what is not this 

 is not real. We may say, in other words, that there is no 

 being or fact outside of that which is commonly called 

 psychical existence. Feeling, thought and volition (any 

 groups under which we class psychical phenomena) are all 

 the material of existence. And there is no other material 

 1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, p. 282. 



