Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/464

 450 F. H. BRADLEY : and questions, and in the world of imagination and of mere idea. I will deal first with the case of imaginary ideas. The imaginary in general is defined by exclusion from the real. It is something which positively possesses the character of this or that real world and hence suggests its inclusion there, but on the other hand is shut out from the limits of the world in question. And the world which excludes is primarily the world of actual fact. This world, we saw above, is made by construction from my real body. It is the region, in short, which is taken as continuous with that basis. 1 Whatever, having more or less the character of this series, nevertheless falls outside it, is imaginary, or, taken more generally, the imaginary is whatever is excluded by actual fact. And in a secondary sense the imaginary is what in the same way falls outside of any kind of world which is taken as actual. Now if an idea is admitted to be imaginary (which we have seen means unreal), how, it will be objected, can such an idea be the adjective of reality ? And this pro- blem is solved, we have seen, by the plurality of real worlds. The idea is repelled from one sphere but qualifies another, and in this other sphere is real. Reality, we feel, is a whole which extends beyond any special world. It is something which comes to us as wider than the distinctions we make in it. Hence, wherever an idea is repelled by a subject, there remains another field which in some sense is real. In this field the idea falls positively, inheres in it and qualifies it, and, when we reflect, we can express this inherence in a judgment. The idea, before we so reflect, is not a predicate, but the idea on the other hand is still not free. It is in the air, if you will, but you must add that it qualifies this air which is its support and reality. Consider for example the world inhabited by the characters in some novel. Things not only here are so or otherwise in actual literary fact, but beyond this fact we recognise a world of reality. And this world does not consist in or depend on the mere event that Balzac or Thackeray chose to write down this or that detail. 2 It is the same elsewhere and in every world of the arts. The imaginary, we all say, has its laws, and, if so, we must go on to add, it has its own truth and own life, and its ideas, floating in reference to common fact, are hence attached to this its own world of reality. Thus again in abstract science, where we should refuse to say that truth is 1 In the second part of this paper I will further discuss the nature of the basis mentioned above. 2 See on this point Prof. Bosanquet's Knowledge and Reality, pp. 144 foil., followed by Prof. James in his Psychology, ii., 292.