Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/93

 EXISTENCE AND CONTENT. 79 category, even that which involves the barest determinations of Being implicated in the distinction of a "this" from a "that," can escape. Mr. Bradley is driven to the conclusion that Know- ledge is a perversion of experience: "content" conceals instead of exhibiting Eeality. And it is not to the point to maintain, as do certain members of the Idealistic school, that the reflective transformation, which " existence " undergoes in thought exposes a more complete and inclusive Eeality. Such argument errs in mistaking determinate, conceptual meaning for concrete individuality. The source of the error is found in an unconscious equivocation in the use of the terms determinate and inclusive. Looking toward the desired outcome of their thought, these Idealists use the terms as meaning something more concrete and individual than what was previously had in mind. For them, indeed, to be determinate and inclusive is equivalent to being concrete. The single, determinate, all-inclusive Eeality of Green, Bosanquet and Caird is intended to be quite concrete. In fact, however, it is a highly organised concept, and is therefore essentially abstract. The original Totality was concrete but indeterminate : the reflective Whole is determinate but symbolic. In the process of transformation the individuality of the given has escaped. This result is veiled from the above- named writers in several ways. First, by the dialectical conviction that to determine experience ideally is equivalent to revealing its concreteness. Second, by the device of including the particular as well as the universal within the movement of the dialectical transformation. We are reminded that if percepts without concepts are blind, it is equally true that concepts without percepts are empty : particular and universal are essentially correlative and equally valid. Now this may be quite true, and yet the difficulty raised by Bradley remains unanswered. For when we look more closely into the arguments of the writers above mentioned we find that the second leads back to the first and the first to the defect indicated by Bradley. It may be admitted that percept and con- cept, particular and universal, are correlative. We may go so far as to insist that the meaning is identical in both, and that the distinction rests upon the use to which it is put. Meaning used freely and apart from its original embodiment is conceptual: meaning embodied in some individual aspect of experience is perceptual. The more definitely we set ourselves to the deter- mination of meaning, the more do we overlook the individual embodiments of ideas and tend to set up the organised symbol of reflexion as ultimate Eeality. For this reason it is correct to say that the all-inclusive Eeality of Green and others is no more than an all-inclusive Concept. No doubt these Idealists desire to retain concreteness. Although Green's thought is somewhat elusive upon this point, still one can find an indication in his writings that the Absolute somehow includes the immediacy of feeling with the mediacy of thought. But to such a result his method