For "the Absolute is perfect in all its
detail, it is equally true and good throughout."[2] Whether or not the
good is contradictory, as Mr Bradley maintains,[3] we must allow that he
succeeds in making his account of it contradictory.
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 411.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 401.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 409.]
I will try to put the gist of the matter in my own words. Mr Bradley's
Absolute is eternal, relationless, ineffable. To it goodness cannot be
ascribed; indeed no predicate can be properly applied to it, for any
predication implies relation: in earlier language than Mr Bradley's it
involves determination and therefore negation. Even to say that the
Absolute appears or manifests itself is to predicate something, to
imply relation, and thus is an offence against the absoluteness of the
Absolute. But nevertheless there _is_ a world of phenomena, which the
most mystical of philosophers must recognise, if only as a world
of illusion. The sum-total of these phenomena may be called the
appearances of the Absolute; and the Absolute, according to Mr
Bradley, "is real nowhere outside them." In this sense of reality we
may make predicates about it. Indeed all our predicates, Mr Bradley
teaches in his 'Logic,' have reality--the universe of reality--for
their ultimate subject.
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