MINE AND THINE 75 



would have disappeared " l -for it is assumed that where 

 there is oneness there are no relations, and where there are 

 relations there is not oneness. And rather than question 

 this assumption, or the assumption that thought, will, and 

 feeling aim at rising to a region where there are no rela- 

 tions, Mr. Bradley first calls these functions failures, 

 and then constitutes their failure into the sole ground of 

 their existence. For if they made the ideal and the exist- 

 ing one in the sense, that is, of an abstract one which 

 excludes all difference they would undoubtedly cease to 

 exist, and so would their object. We should have blank 

 Nihilism ; a universal collapse into abstract sameness. 

 Knowledge would be no more, nor morality nor art any 

 more ; and not even their transmutation in the Absolute 

 would avail, unless that transmutation still left to them the 

 differences in which alone they find their existence, that is, 

 unless even the Absolute kept them from attaining their 

 end. 



Now, when a theory is at war with the whole universe 

 and can be maintained only by depriving it of all content, 

 or by merging it in an incognisable Absolute, it may be 

 considered to have completed its task. It has revealed, if 

 it has proceeded consistently, the abstract character of its 

 fundamental hypothesis. 



I believe that this, in the last resort, constitutes the 

 crowning merit of Mr. Bradley's great work. Ever since 

 the time of Kant, Idealism especially in so far as it has 

 not set due value upon the self-differentiating moment of 

 spirit which Hegel accentuated has been intent upon the 

 unity of the subject and object, and on the ideal aspect of 

 reality. Mr. Bradley has pushed this tendency home. 



1 Appearance and Reality, p. 463. 



