MINE AND THINE 73 



contradictory demand, similar to requiring a mathematician 

 to prove that 2x2 = 21. For Mr. Bradley requires us to 

 "find," "take up," "assert," that is, to possess as experi- 

 ence, what, at the same time, must not be experience. It 

 is impossible to do so ; but that tells us nothing as to the 

 nature of experience. A dualist might quite well acknow- 

 ledge that he can "find," "take up," "assert," "speak 

 of" nothing but experience, and still try to maintain that 

 experience consists of utterly disparate elements. That we 

 cannot go beyond experience, that ' ' we can conceive only 

 the experienced," does not prove that experience consists 

 of mere unity, nor of mere difference, nor does it throw 

 any light whatsoever upon its constitution. 



Neither does the fact that ' ' nothing remains when all 

 perception and feeling are removed" prove that nothing 

 exists except perception and feeling. It is an old fallacy, 

 exposed by Mr. Bradley himself, to conclude that because 

 the removal of one element in a whole destroys the whole, 

 therefore that one element is the whole. Pleasure may be 

 an essential element of the good, but there may be other 

 essential elements in it as well, the removal of any one of 

 which would destroy it. 



Neither of these arguments proves that "reality is 

 experience " ; or that it consists, on both its subjective and 

 objective aspects, of feelings, thought, or volitions. They 

 show that the object is relative to the subject, and that 

 subject and object are indiscerptible elements of experience ; 

 but not that they are so indistinguishably one that know- 

 ledge knows knowledge, feeling feels feelings, volition wills 

 volitions. 



Indeed, Mr. Bradley does not aim at any such insipid 

 iteration, nor does he need to be told that unity implies 



