74 THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS- 



difference, and difference unity any more than does Dr. 

 Ward. His Absolute is to contain, combine, transmute, 

 nay, be all finite things. 1 The Absolute "w its appear- 

 ances, all and every one of them." In a similar way Dr. 

 Ward's God is to be "the living unity of all." 2 An 

 abstract pantheistic Monism is as repugnant to the one as 

 a polytheistic aristocracy of Monads is to the other. But 

 Mr. Bradley's logic is inexorable. His premisses are such 

 that differences must not merely be reconciled or har- 

 monised, and relations not merely be surmounted, but 

 eliminated. 



First, he can admit distinctions, but not divisions : 

 'What we discover is a whole in which distinctions can 

 be made, but in which divisions do not exist." 8 Then the 

 distinctions must be quantitative only, not qualitative: 

 there are differences of degrees of reality, and no other 

 differences. But even these, like every other distinction, 

 are mind-made, like Dr. Ward's universals. And because 

 mind makes them, both they and mind are appearances ; 

 that is to say, they are self-contradictory. All the rational 

 functions of man his thought, his will, his feeling aim 

 at compelling distinctions to disappear. 'The theoretic 

 object moves towards a consummation in which all distinc- 

 tion and all ideality must be suppressed." 4 The same 

 must be said of the object of the practical and of the 

 aesthetic activities of mind. They seek " to transcend the 

 opposition of idea to existence, and to surmount and rise 

 beyond the relational consciousness." 5 



They cannot attain their end. If they did, " if the ideal 

 and the existing were made one, the relations between them 



1 Appearance and Reality, p. 486. 2 Naturalism and Agnosticism, p. 280. 

 8 Appearance and Reality, p. 146. ^Ibid., p. 462. 5 Ibid., p. 463. 



