It is just because so many of
the conjunctions of experience seem so external
that a philosophy of pure experience must tend
to pluralism in its ontology. So far as things
have space-relations, for example, we are free
to imagine them with different origins even. If
they could get to _be_, and get into space at all,
then they may have done so separately. Once
there, however, they are _additives_ to one another,
and, with no prejudice to their natures,
all sorts of space-relations may supervene between
111
them. The question of how things could
come to be anyhow, is wholly different from
the question what their relations, once the
being accomplished, may consist in.
Mr. Bradley now affirms that such external
relations as the space-relations which we here
talk of must hold of entirely different subjects
from those of which the absence of such relations
might a moment previously have been
plausibly asserted. Not only is the _situation_
different when the book is on the table, but
the _book_itself_ is different as a book, from what
it was when it was off the table.(1) He admits
that "such external relations seem possible
and even existing. . . . That you do not alter
what you compare or rearrange in space seems
to common sense quite obvious, and that on
---
1 Once more, don't slip from logical into physical situations.
Pages:
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107