Philosophy

link to connect them with the old. The problem is to find how the relation can stand to its qualities, and this problem is insoluble.” I cannot deal adequately with this argument without abstruse technicalities which would be out of place. I will, however, point out what seems to me the essential error. Bradley conceives a relation as something just as substantial as its terms, and not radically different in kind. The analogy of the chain with links should make us suspicious, since it clearly proves, if it is valid, that chains are impossible, and yet, as a fact, they exist. There is not a word in his argument which would not apply to physical chains. The successive links are united not by another link, but by a spatial relation. I think Bradley has been misled, unconsciously, by a circumstance to which I alluded in an earlier chapter, namely, the fact that the word for a relation is as substantial as the words for its terms. Suppose A and B are two events, and A precedes B. In the proposition “A precedes B”, the word “precedes” is just as substantial as the words “A” and “B”. The relation of the two events A and B is represented, in language, by the time or space order of the three words “A”, “precedes”, and “B”. But this order is an actual relation, not a word for relation. The first step in Bradley’s regress does actually have to be taken in giving verbal expression to a relation, and the word for a relation does have to be related to the words for its terms. But this is a linguistic, not a metaphysical, fact, and the regress does not have to go any further. It should be added that, as Bradley himself recognises, his difficulties break out afresh when he comes to consider the relation of subject and predicate when a character is assigned to Reality, and that he is therefore compelled to conclude that no truth is quite true. A conclusion of this sort, based upon an extremely abstract argument, makes it natural to suspect that there is some error in the argument. Pluralism is the view of science and common sense, and is therefore to be accepted if the arguments against it are not conclusive. For my part, I have no doubt whatever that it is the true view, and that monism is derived from a faulty logic inspired by mysticism. This logic dominates the philosophy of Hegel and his followers; it is also the essential basis of Bergson’s system, although it is seldom mentioned in his writings. When it is rejected, ambitious metaphysical systems such as those of the past are seen to be impossible.