Bradley
in short repeats the fable of the dog, the bone,
and its image in the water. With a world of
particulars, given in loveliest union, in conjunction
definitely various, and variously definite,
---
1 Op. cit., p. 570.
2 How meaningless is the contention that in such wholes (or in
'book-on-table,' 'watch-in-pocket,' etc) the relation is an additional
entity _between_ the terms, needing itself to be related again to each!
Both Bradley (op. cit., pp. 32-33) and Royce (_The_World_and_the_
_Individual_, vol. I, p. 128) lovingly repeat this piece of profundity.
121
the 'how' of which you 'understand' as
soon as you see the fact of them,(1) for there is
no 'how' except the constitution of the fact
as given; with all this given him, I say, in pure
experience, he asks for some ineffable union in
the abstract instead, which, if he gained it,
would only be a duplicate of what he has already
in his full possession. Surely he abuses
the privilege which society grants to all us
philosophers, of being puzzle-headed.
Polemic writing like this is odious; but with
absolutism in possession in so many quarters,
omission to defend my radical empiricism
against its best known champion would count
as either superficiality or inability.
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