Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/230

214 predominates; and one feels that much of this negative criticism represents what is now a permanent possession of modern metaphysic. The least significant chapters seem to be the ones on Self-consciousness, where Mr. Bradley, while well exposing many customary confusions, seems himself decidedly confused.

The second book opens with a general colloquy with absolute scepticism. Much has been lost; but all is not yet lost. One has a "criterion" of reality (p. 136): "Ultimate reality is such that it does not contradict itself; here is an absolute criterion." Nor is this criterion vain or empty; for at once, when used properly, it supplies us with real information (pp. 138, 139). We already have on our hands, namely (p. 140), the whole world of appearance. The magnitude of this world the first book has only the more made manifest. "What appears is, and whatever is cannot fall outside the real." Combining this with the former criterion: "We may say that everything, which appears, is somehow real in such a way as to be self-consistent. The character of the real is to possess everything phenomenal in a harmonious form." Hence, to the self-contradictory appearances of book first, we now have to oppose positive constructive concepts which shall reconcile or tend to reconcile the aspects that there were discordant. Thus the method of the second book is defined. The content of our theory is taken empirically from the world of appearance. The form to be given to this content is furnished by the principle of universal consistency, which is to characterize the Real. The result, as far as one succeeds, is a positive conception of the Absolute. Limited the whole work is, and, in Mr. Bradley's opinion, must needs be, by our human inability to define more than a few of the positive characters of the process whereby the reconciliation of the various and conflicting appearances with the self-consistent Absolute is to be defined. Mr. Bradley, in this portion of his work, is, in fact, extremely conscious of the incompleteness of human insight, although he is convinced not only of the truth, but of the actual, although limited, constructive success of the processes which he is able to undertake for the sake of reaching his positive definition of the Absolute. We have already seen something of this definition.

More specifically, the Absolute is an "individual" (p. 140 sqq.). There could not be a plurality of reals, for reasons that have appeared in the critical studies of the first book. And so the Absolute must be "a system," or "one whole." This whole must have for its matter "experience," i.e., its content must "fall within sentience"