Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/561

542 system in the former sense. But F, if supposed to be wholly alone, and to be the only Being, and absolutely simple, is still not exempt from the universal self-diremption. When you think of it, — now, for instance, it is not alone. It is, by hypothesis, just now in the same world with the thoughts that define it. “But it is such that it need not be together with the thoughts that think it. It could exist independently.” Yes, but to exist alone, and to exist in company with another, are not the same thing. F, then, has two aspects, or potencies: the aspect that enables it to exist independently of f, or of any thought, and its power to exist in relation to, and along with f, and with the rest of the Kette determined by the presence of f. F, the same F, has these two states of being, — its existence alone, and what Herbart called its Zusammen. Now just as the Zusammen is, by hypothesis, a fact, which nobody gets rid of by calling it a Zufällige Ansicht, so to be in Zusammen is to be in a state very different from the “Being, alone and without a Second,” which F has before f comes. Call F, when taken as alone, F1 and F, when taken as in company, F2. Then the problem, How are F1 and F2 related? gives rise to the same sort of Kette with which Mr. Bradley has made us so familiar.

I agree, then, wholly with Mr. Bradley, that every form of realistic Being involves such endless or self-representative constitution. And I agree with him that, in particular, realistic Being breaks down upon the contradictions resulting from this constitution. I do not, however, accept the view that to be self-representative is, as such, to be self-contradictory. But I hold that any world of self-representative Being must be of such nature as to partake of the constitution of a Self, either because it is a Self, or because it is dependent for its form upon the Self whose work or image it is. But the realistic world is not able to accept this constitution. In case of the realistic type of Being, then, the endless fission proves to be an endless corruption and destruction of whatever had appeared to be the fact. Why? For the reason pointed out, but without any mention of the mere infinity of the relational