Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/143

 F. H. BRADLEY'S PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC. 131 be read in comprehension, while, as referring to the real, it may be read in extension. The distinction is hardly worth re- taining. So the current doctrine of the quantity of propositions can be shown to rest on little more than grammatical peculiarities of verbal expressions, and critics have had little trouble in col- lecting empirical expressions which by no ingenuity can find rea- sonable explanation within that doctrine. Even in recent treatises the attempt to remodel the current teaching on quantity has hardly gone further than the introduction of distinctions between law and instance, abstract universality and concrete particularity, which are far from exhausting the matter. It is interesting to note the manner in which Mr. Bradley is driven to what he has called specially metaphysical determinations in order to effect an explanation of quantitative differences. Ideal content he appears to take as in itself universal : it has no quantitative determina- tions in it; but such content is only one element in the judgment. The real which is the correlative factor is shown to contain in itself the mutually determining features of abstract universality and abstract particularity, and to have therefore in its individual character the aspects of the universal the identity of differences, and of the particular the differences of this identity. The real is thus concrete, and may appear as either concrete universal, or concrete particular, or the individual which is the truth of both. And the ideal content is at once seen to be an abstract, just as worthless as the assumed atomic, ultimate, undetermined real. This is a most important result ; it affects the whole doctrine of judgment, and enables us to see that the judgment is nothing but the way in which the elements of the only reality, the thing which is known or has its notion, are held apart from one another so that their mutual implication becomes apparent. If we please we may express this in a subjective fashion, and think of the pro- cess as that in which the real is determined by some idea in us ; but such a translation is dangerous, as in all probability leading to an opposition of real and ideal which can have no place in the judgment per .>?. We may ask, and the question appears at the close of Mr. Bradley's work, what signifies this fundamental form of consciousness, the reference of knowledge to reality ? how conies it that in our judging and reasoning we should at once seem to be merely reproducing in ideal fashion a reality that is completely given and at the same time supplying intelligible shape and substance for a matter that is relatively abstract and undetermined? But we must be careful not to prejudge the answ r er by introducing into our very notion of the judgment a reference to the abstract subject. That hi the mental develop- ment of the concrete spirit judgment does come about through the opposition of perceptions, representations and the like, is a fact with which Logic does not require to concern itself. In his Second Book Mr. Bradley passes to the consideration of Reasoning. Part of the Book is occupied with a polemical review