Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/470

 456 F. H. BRADLEY: I have now in various instances attempted to justify the denial of floating ideas. If the principle has heen made clear to the reader, I think that further detail would be super- fluous. Ideas float, but they float relatively, and there is another ground always which supports them, and of which they are adjectives. They need not be predicated of this ground, and, if such a necessity is assumed, then the denial of floating ideas, I agree, is untenable. But this necessity rests, I urge, upon a false alternative. Without predication an ideal content can qualify more or less immediately a subject from which it is distinct. And such a qualification is all that our conclusion requires. Every possible idea therefore may be said to be used exis- tentially, for every possible idea qualifies and is true of a real world. And the number of real worlds, in a word, is indefinite. Every idea therefore in a sense is true and is true of reality. The question with every idea is how far and in what sense is it true. The question is always whether, qualifying reality in one sense, the idea qualifies reality in -another sense also. For, true in one world, an idea may be false in another world, and still more false if you seek to make it true of the Universe. II. It may serve to throw light upon the whole subject if I go on to discuss briefly a well-known doctrine. We often hear that between an object as imaginary and the same object as real there is no difference in content, or at least that such a difference, where it exists, is not essential. This contradict itself. Incompattbles, such as round and square, if you con- nect them in another world are not taken as simply united in one subject. And, apart from such a union, they are no longer incompatible. You may suppose a distinction more or less specified in the imaginary subject to which they belong. Or again, without any such positive supposition, you have at least by your repulsion from the ' real ' world removed the point of identity through which they collide there. The incompatibles hence fall into and coalesce with tUe residual mass of unspecified con- junction. As qualifying this somehow they are compatible, and you can, if you please, go on to predicate both as true. On the other hand, if even in an imaginary world you seek to unite round and square simply in one subject, they once more cease to qualify this 'real' world. They are once more exiled to a further outlying world of mere imagination, in which, being again merely somehow conjoined, they can both together be real. The references given above will, I hope, furnish the explanation of this brief answer. I would however once more remind the reader that in any case, by even speaking of contradictories, we tacitly assume them to be somehow conjoined, and I would add that any view of contradic- tion which fails to deal with this aspect of the case is at best incomplete and is probably defective. The difficulty raised in connexion with the Law of Contradiction will I think, when fully considered, tend to con- firm on everv side the truth of the main conclusions which I defend.