Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 4.djvu/347

 every part of our phenomenal world has its place in the real, only all contradictions are there removed, harmonised and united in one timeless experience, — so that at any rate that which we know is not the real. But “harmony” is the most formal of terms, expressing merely the unity which is the pre-supposition of all metaphysics, even of all science: while an experience which is neither feeling nor thought nor any other form of human experience, and which in addition is timeless, is the most unknowable of unknowables.

Adherence to the former of the two views accordingly leads us to an incomprehensible reality, which no study of the phenomenal will help us to understand, since the one is radically different from the other, however closely they may be connected together. If on the other hand we accept the second view, that time-relations are predicable of the ultimate reality, then it seems to follow that there is an endless process, — that “spurious infinite” upon which, since Hegel, metaphysicians have looked askance, — as, among other defects, inconsistent with the sup- posed perfection of the Absolute. A fortiori is this the case if the process be interpreted as a progress, while if we deny this of the Absolute, reducing succession in him to “pulses of feeling” as it were, then the progress of the finite individual becomes itself of doubtful worth; for nothing less than the whole of reality seems to satisfy the individual as a sphere for his activity, and if his progress is not a real one in reference to that, then it is worthless to him also.

Without hoping to clear these difficulties away, which would demand an entire metaphysical system, we shall try to prove that it is possible to form a rational conception of the relation of time-succession to the Absolute, which, in spite of its difficulties, at least does not involve us in the admission that the latter is an absolutely unknowable reality. A criterion can of course be found only in experience, in the widest sense, and inference from it ; merely logical criteria are on the other hand formal, they neither prove nor disprove anything. Such a one is “self-contradiction,” on which Mr Bradley bases his metaphysical theory, and his criticism of reality. Every one would be ready to admit that the proposition “A is not not-A” is true, for example, “a unity is not a non-unity,” but the crux lies in the discovery of what is a non-unity, and for this we have to go to experience. We cannot say at once that any diversity is a non-unity, on the contrary we find that it is not so. If, however, predication itself, as Mr Bradley holds, involves self-contradiction, then for us nothing but a bare identity, if there could be such, would be valid. Any plurality, any diversity, considered as in some way a unity, would necessarily turn out to be self-