into decidedly new and important forms, but does not, in Mr.
Bradley’s opinion, furnish any acceptable ground for its
positive solution. “We have found,” he says, “puzzles in reality,
besetting every way in which we have taken it.” The solution
of these puzzles, if ever discovered, must be “a view not
obnoxious to these mortal attacks, and combining differences
in one so as to turn the edge of criticism” (p. 114). The mere
appeal, however, to the fact of self-consciousness, does not
furnish this needed explicit harmony of unity and variety.
The Self does, indeed, unite diversity and unity in a
profoundly important way; but the mere fact that this is
somehow done does not show us how it is done.
III. The Problem of the One and the Many as Insoluble by Thought, yet solved by the Absolute
Despite this elaborate exposition of the apparent hopelessness of the problem as to the One and the Many, Mr. Bradley’s own theory of the Absolute, proposed in his second book, turns upon asserting that in Reality unity and diversity are positively reconciled, and reconciled, moreover, not by a simple abolition of either of the apparently opposed principles, but in a way that leaves to each its place. For first (p. 140), “Reality is one in this sense that it has a positive nature exclusive of discord. . . . Its diversity can be diverse only so far as not to clash.” Yet, on the other hand, “Appearance must belong to reality, and it must, therefore, be concordant and other than it seems. The bewildering mass of phenomenal diversity must hence somehow be at unity and self-consistent; for it cannot be elsewhere than in reality, and reality excludes discord. Or, again, we may put it so: The real is individual. It is one in the sense that its positive character embraces all differences in an inclusive harmony.” Further, “To be real . . . must be to fall within sentience” (p. 144). Or, again, to be real (p. 146) is “to be something which comes as a feature and aspect within one whole of feeling, something which, except as an integral element of such sentience,
