Jacques Maritain Center :
Theories of Knowledge / by Leslie J. Walker, S.J.
§ 61. At first sight it may appear somewhat out of place to begin to discuss Appearance and Reality while yet we are in the psychological part of our subject, especially as its author has expressly warned us that to attempt to base metaphysics on psychology can only lead to "a disastrous hybrid which possesses the merits of neither science."{1} Mr. Bradley's method, however, differs considerably from that of other objective idealists. In Book I. he endeavours to show that our ordinary philosophical notions, such as qualities, things, substance and accident, space, time, causality, are riddled with contradictions; and, hence, infers that all these are merely appearances which, taken as they stand, cannot be true of the real, and which yet, since they indubitably exist, must somehow belong to Reality.{2} In Book II. the 'general character of Reality' is first laid down, and then follows a discussion of 'the way in which appearances can belong to Reality,' or rather an attempt to prove that in predicating appearances of Reality no contradiction is involved. The positive result of Appearance and Reality may be summed up in two theses, "Reality is One " and " Reality is Sentient-Experience." The first of these is essential to all forms of Absolutism; the second is peculiar to Mr. Bradley.
But there is yet another difference between Mr. Bradley's standpoint and that of other Absolutists. In support of his assertions, and particularly in support of these two fundamental theses, he makes constant appeals to the psychological data of experience. His philosophy, in fact, may be regarded from two points of view. It may be treated as a theory which must be considered and judged as a whole according as it renders or fails to render a satisfactory and rational account of the Universe: or we may select principles which are fundamental in Mr. Bradley's position and inquire what foundation these have in the data of experience. Regarded from the first point of view, I shall discuss Mr. Bradley's position, together with that of other forms of Absolutism, in the chapter dealing with the Metaphysics of Absolutism; but as the author of Appearance and Reality, in order to establish the above-mentioned theses, himself makes appeal to the data of experience, his psychological standpoint must be dealt with at once.
§ 62. In regard to the function of psychology in the theory of knowledge, or rather in metaphysics (for Mr. Bradley says there is really no such science as the theory of cognition),{3} my own opinion is practically the same as Mr. Bradley's. The theory of knowledge is not based wholly on psychology, i.e., it cannot be proved merely by psychological analysis. Still less can metaphysics be established in this way. Yet, as Mr. Bradley says, the metaphysician is forced to trespass inside the limits of psychology. Consequently, "the metaphysician who is no psychologist, runs great dangers. For he must take up, and must work upon the facts about the soul; and, if be has not tried to learn what they are, the risk is very serious."{4} This is precisely my own view of the matter. Psychology must provide the data upon which the epistemologist works, and his theories must be confirmed or verified in the experiences which he seeks to explain, but nothing more.
§ 63. Theoretically, then, Mr. Bradley and I are at one in regard to the function of psychology in metaphysics ; yet I cannot help but think that Mr. Bradley's philosophy has been very largely influenced by, even if it is not wholly due to, his psychological views. Nor do I stand alone in this opinion. In an article entitled "The New Realism and the Old Idealism," which appeared in Mind for July, 1906, the following passage occurs: -
The more recent system of Mr. Bradley has in some respects a more objective aspect (than that of Green). His repudiation of the ballot of bloodless categories is familiar to everyone; and his criticism of the Self goes far to destroy subjectivity. Yet, on the other hand, he is in some fundamental points far more decidedly subjective than Green, or perhaps than any other prominent representative of idealism. Certainly by his constant appeal to 'experience,' as at once the standpoint and the goal in the search for reality, he gives to his philosophy a subjective turn from which he is never quite able to free it. The world for Mr. Bradley is a straightened-out experience, but still it is an experience, and nothing more; and, indeed, the most purely subjective aspect of experience -- mere feeling -- seems in the end to be for Mr. Bradley its most important and significant aspect.{5} [Professor Mackenzie's advice to idealists, therefore, is :] 'Close thy Berkeley -- open thy Plato; close thy Bradley -- open thy Hegel.'{6}
§ 64. There is a great deal of truth in these remarks. Mr. Bradley is not a subjective idealist, and Phenomenalism he expressly rejects; yet, for all that, his position approximates very closely to the esse is percipi of Hume. Objects, if abstracted from our perception of them, are nothing, said Hume: they exist only when they are perceived. But perception is a state of the mind. Hence objects are really states of the mind, and their esse is percipi. Compare this argument with the statements which Mr. Bradley makes in support of, if not in proof of, his thesis that Reality is Sentient Experience. He thus introduces the subject in his second Chapter on The General Nature of Reality.{7}
We perceive, on reflection, that to be real, or even barely to exist, must be to fall within sentience. Sentient experience, in short, is reality, and what is not this is not real. We may say, in other words, that there is no being or fact outside of that which is commonly called psychical existence. Feeling, thought, and volition (any groups under which we class psychical phenomena) are all the material of existence, and there is no other material, actual or even possible.
This position does not involve Subjectivism, for Mr. Bradley does not first "divide the percipient subject from the universe ; and then, resting on that subject, as on a thing actual by itself," urge " that it cannot transcend its own states." "To sum up the subject as real independently of the whole, and to make the whole into experience in the sense of an objective of that subject,"{8} seems to him indefensible. "The universe and its objects must not be called states of my soul."{9} It is the whole itself which is experience, and there is no subject which exists independently of this whole. The philosophy of Appearance and Reality is, therefore, not subjective but objective Idealism or Absolutism.
On the other hand, the passage quoted above is characteristic of Mr. Bradley's standpoint, and seems to approximate so closely to the Humeian doctrine that Professor Mackenzie's protest is hardly surprising, especially as he regards the thesis 'esse is percipi ' as the foundation of subjective Idealism. Nor is it surprising that Professor Mackenzie should advise prospective idealists to study Hegel rather than Bradley, since he holds that a true Idealism depends upon the absolute rejection of this principle{10} and on this account replies to Mr. Moore's 'Refutation of Idealism' by a charge of ignoratio elenchi. But whether Mr. Moore's arguments are valid or not against the Idealism of Hegel and Professor Mackenzie, they certainly do not miss the point in regard to Mr. Bradley, who is admittedly one of the leading, if not the leading figure among British idealists. Accordingly, it will be worth while to examine the Bradleian position that Reality is Sentient Experience, while at the same time bearing in mind that Mr. Bradley's Absolutism may be regarded from another point of view which is more closely related to that of the Objective Idealism of which we shall have to treat in a later chapter.{11}
§ 65. That there is no being or fact which does not 'fall within experience,' or which is outside what we call 'psychical existence,' is a doctrine which Mr. Bradley thinks will, in its general form, be evident at once. The test of it, he says,
lies ready to our hand, and the decision rests in the manner in which it is applied. . . Find any piece of existence, take up anything that anyone could possibly call a fact, or could in any sense assert to have being, and then judge if it does not consist in sentient experience. Try to discover any sense in which you can still continue to speak of it, when all perception and feeling have been removed; or point out any fragment of its matter, any aspect of its being, which is not derived from and is not still relative to this source. When the experiment is made strictly, I can myself conceive of nothing else than the experienced. Anything in no sense felt or perceived becomes to me quite unmeaning. And as I cannot think of it without realising either that I am not thinking at all, or that I am thinking of it against my will as being experienced, I am driven to the conclusion that for me experience is the same as reality.{12}
§ 66. Two objections may be urged against the position here set forth. First of all, it may be questioned whether the results of Mr. Bradley's introspection are not peculiar to himself, or at any rate to a few philosophic minds who in their introspection cannot rid themselves of a certain idealistic prejudice. Secondly, even granted the data which Mr. Bradley assumes, his conclusion does not seem to be vouched for by his premises, unless a further assumption is made, namely, the validity of the doctrine of Immanence. To deal with the inference first: -- Granting that nothing exists that is not perceived, what follows? Not that reality is one with sentient experience, but that to exist implies a something or a somebody in whose experience that existent is perceived, i.e., a percipient something which may or may not be distinct from what is perceived. The data, even if true, do not warrant the conclusion that esse is percipi, still less that it is percipere , but merely that esse implies percipere. Some sort of connection between percipient and perceived we might infer; but this, for aught the data have to say upon the matter, might be a causal connection, or a pre-established harmony.
§ 67. I do not think, however, that many psychologists would concede that Mr. Bradley has given a true account of the data of human experience. I certainly cannot agree with him, nor do I think that Professor Mackenzie would do so, in spite of his Idealism. Certainly if you asked the man in the street whether he could conceive of a palm tree growing in the wilds of Africa with nobody there to perceive it, he would answer you in the affirmative; and I am afraid I am of the same opinion. If anyone was there, of course the tree might chance to be perceived; but the question is whether it would cease to be there as soon as the visitor went away. I am quite ready to concede that all trees are perceivable. Nay, more, we might say, I think, that every existing being is capable of being experienced, either by perception or by thought. Indeed, I would even go so far as to say that all things are 'experienced' by God whatever 'experience' may mean when predicated of the Divinity; but I cannot concede, even in this case, that their esse is experience. Again, it is a principle with Scholastics that all knowledge is derived, either directly or by inference, from sense-experience; but this is very different from affirming that it is sense-experience. Personally, I can continue to think and speak, and, so it seems to me, quite rationally, about 'facts' and 'beings' and 'pieces of existence ' which are not sentient experiences, nor yet experienced by anyone, except -- according to my theology -- by God.
§ 68. But Mr. Bradley goes further still. Not only are all things sentient experience, but their given existence he affirms to be a state of his, i.e., of the experient's soul. Having assured us that his horse and his body are, for him, nothing but experience, he tells us that 'if we push home the question as to their given existence we can find it nowhere except as a state of his soul.' "When I perceive them, or think of them, there is, so far, no discoverable 'fact' outside my psychical conditions."{13} Now, either the terms 'fact' and 'given existence' here mean 'perception' as opposed to the object perceived, in which case Mr. Bradley's use of the term 'fact' is somewhat strained and is hardly consistent with his previous use of it,{14} where he speaks of the want of correspondence which may exist between ' assertion ' and 'fact' ' ('fact' there signifying, not present perception, but objective events which have occurred in the past); or else Mr. Bradley's account of the perception of a horse and of the body is introspectively incorrect. For the horses and bodies which we perceive are not perceived as states of our own soul; and the facts about which we think are thought of as other than ourselves. This last point Mr. Bradley apparently is willing to concede. For immediately after affirming that when he perceives or thinks of a horse or of his body, there is no discoverable fact outside his psychical condition, he adds, "But such a 'fact' is not for me the 'fact' of my horse, or, again, of my body. Their true existence is not that which is present in my mind, but rather, as perhaps we should say, present to it."{15} What a world of difference a preposition may make! The substitution of 'to' for 'in' changes the whole meaning of Mr. Bradley's assertion, and seems to convert him from a subjective into an objective idealist, if not into a realist. For if objects are presented to consciousness, but are not in consciousness, they may not be sentient experience at all, but something quite different.
§ 69. Mr. Bradley's theory of judgment; however, saves him from inconsistency. For though he admits that objects are present to, not in, consciousness, and affirms that the 'true' existence of horses and bodies is "a content which works apart from, and is irreconcilable with, its own psychical being," this does not mean that the 'true' existence of presented objects is not psychical, or that it is not at bottom identical with sentient experience, but merely that it is not identical with their existence as ideas in my mind. Ego and non-egos, minds and objects, psychical and 'true' existences are at bottom one, for in themselves they are mere abstractions, appearances, thought-distinctions which have broken out in the background of sentient experience, and which get their reality therefrom.{16}
In judgment the immediate datum of sense-experience is analysed into a subject and a predicate, a 'that' and a 'what,' an 'existence' and a 'content,' a 'fact' and an 'idea.' Predicates, whats, contents, or ideas work loose from subjects, thats, existences, facts, and at the same time transcend them, referring to an Other, to a Beyond, to something which is not a psychical state of my soul. "The soul is not the contents which appear in its states." " A man is not what he thinks of." Principles of logic and morality, though they work in the mind, are not "parts of the mind."{17} Whether the predicate "appears not to go beyond its own subject, or to have been imported divorced from another fact outside," it is "divorced from its psychical existence in my head, and is used without any regard to its being there."{18} Or, as the realist would put it, the predicate is not merely an idea, but a 'quality' which is predicated of reality, and, except in psychological retrospection, it is always regarded as a quality and not as an idea.
On the other hand, " the subject is an actual existence." " No one ever means to assert about anything but reality, and to do anything but qualify a 'that' by a 'what.{19} Not that the subject is ever "mere reality, or bare existence without character. The subject, doubtless, has unspecified content which is not stated in the predicate. For judgment is the differentiation of a complex whole, and hence always is analysis and synthesis in one. It separates an element from, and restores it to, the concrete basis; and this basis of necessity is richer than the mere element by itself." Yet the subject is neither the mere 'what' of the predicate nor is it any other mere 'what.' There is in the subject, whether it be perceived or not, "an aspect of existence which is absent from the bare predicate." Beyond the content of thought there is a subject (viz., reality) "of which it is true and which it does not comprehend." "The 'that' of the actual subject will for ever give a something which is not a mere idea, something which is different from any truth, something which makes such a difference to your thinking, that without it you have not even thought completely."{20} The subject, in short, is reality presented as 'this.'{21}
§ 70. With this view of the judgment, so far, I can to a large extent agree. Judgment does involve an analysis of the data of sentient-experience into a 'what' and a 'that,' and the 'what' is referred to reality through the 'that' of which it is predicated. Thus our ideas about reality are not merely ideas, but have objective reference and imply an other than mere thought; and the reason of this is that an other than mere thought is 'given' in sense-experience in which we seem to be brought into immediate contact with reality. 'Existence' may, like other elements in the concrete 'this' or 'that,' become a predicate and so become part of the content of thought; but existence, i.e., objective existence, belongs primarily to the subject of our judgments, for it is given in the data of experience which we denote by that subject, and to it the predicate is referred.
Many questions, however, have yet to be settled. How does existence belong peculiarly to the subject, and in what sense is the latter 'given' in sense-perception? For thought 'existence' is objective; is it also objective for sense-perception? The existence which is predicated in the content of thought is not merely a psychical state of the soul. Is it a mere psychical state of the soul in the subject? Is it, in fact, psychical at all? Again, what is this reality that is presented? Is it the whole of reality or is it a part? Is it a real 'this' or is it reality in general presented as a 'this'? And lastly, in what sense is the 'this' presented as a whole? In what sense is it one, a felt totality?
§ 71. It is in the answer to these questions that I find myself at variance with Mr. Bradley; and as the answers which he gives depend, in part at least, upon his view of the relation of thought to sense-experience, to this we must now turn our attention. Thought can never be equated with experience. Thought-contents cannot -- though they try to do so -- swallow up reality. The reason is that in sense-experience we have a fact which cannot be conjured away, the fact of sensible experience, of immediate presentation with its colouring of pleasure and pain.{22} This fact for Mr. Bradley contains, or implies, everything, even reality itself. To it he appeals again and again in support both of his doctrine that Reality is Sentient Experience and of his doctrine that Reality is One. Sense experience or presentation is something of which we cannot get rid. It is always there in the background as a 'felt-mass,' a 'felt-totality,' a 'unity below distinction.' It is from this background of sentience that all distinctions and all relations -- self and not self, subject and object, psychical and 'true' existence -- take their rise, in it that they appear, and through it that they get whatever degree of reality they may possess. By the process of thought the 'felt-totality' of sentient experience is analysed, and from it emerges a system of relational appearance; but this relational appearance in abstraction from the background of sentient-experience has no reality.
§ 72. It is a fundamental principle with Mr. Bradley that we must not separate product from process, and unless the significance of this principle is understood and its validity admitted the whole force of his argument will be lost. The principle is first introduced in the Chapter on "Relation and Quality," where Mr. Bradley endeavours to prove that qualities are not distinct from relations, and indeed without relations are nothing at all, precisely because "the qualities, as distinct, are made so by an action which is admitted to imply relation;" . . . "and you cannot ever get your product standing apart from its process." "There is an operation which, removing one part of what is given, presents the other part in abstraction. This result is never to be found anywhere apart from a persisting abstraction. And, if we have no further information, I can find no excuse for setting up the result as being fact without the process. The burden lies wholly on the assertor, and he fails entirely to support it."{23}
The separation of product from process, therefore, in Mr. Bradley's opinion, is indefensible, and, as it cannot be proved, he says, it is 'monstrous' to assume it. Accordingly, Mr. Bradley assumes the contradictory principle, viz., that product and process are not separable, but form part of one whole -- a principle which, I suppose, it is not monstrous to assume. At any rate it is assumed, and is applied to the analysis of sense-presentation with the following result. Sense-presentation, when analysed, reveals two aspects -- one objective, the other subjective.
You can certainly abstract from presentation its character of 'thisness,' or its confused relatedness; and you can also abstract the feature of presentation. Of these you can make ideas, for there is nothing which you cannot think of. But you find that these ideas are not the same as the subject of which you must predicate them. You can think of the subject, but you cannot get rid of it or substitute mere thought-content for it.{24}
Hence the 'thisness' or 'confused relatedness' (by which, I suppose, is meant the objective, though unanalysed element of presentation -- what we perceive), and the 'feature of presentation' (which clearly refers to the psychical act of perception itself) are not distinguished in sense-experience or in reality, but only by abstraction and for thought. Mr. Bradley's answer, then, to the question whether objects are presented to the mind or are present in the mind, is that both objects and presentations (and also minds themselves, for that matter) are abstractions due to thought-analysis and construction. They are ideal, not real. Hence, when we say that objects are presented to a mind, we must remember that both minds and objects are nothing but appearances which refer us back to the sentient whole of experience from which and in which they emerge.
§ 73. The validity of this argument rests upon the assumption that product and process cannot be separated -- and of this I shall have something to say in a moment. But even granting this assumption to be valid, I am not at all convinced that the argument will hold. On the contrary, it seems to me that the very assumption upon which it rests, may be used to refute it. In thought we distinguish existence from content, a 'what' from the 'that.' And this distinction arises from and emerges in sentient experience, so that whatever belongs to the 'what' or content must also belong to the 'that,' at least in an unanalysed form. But 'objective existence,' v.g., the 'true' existence of the horses and bodies forms part of the content of thought and is not to be identified with the psychical existence of an idea in the mind.{25} Wherefore it would seem to follow that objective or 'true ' existence, as opposed to psychical existence, belongs also to the 'that,' or to the subject of our judgment as given in sense-perception. And if, in reply to this, it be urged that I have assigned to the subject before analysis what belongs to it only after analysis, I must refer you to the passage already quoted and to many other passages in which we are told that reality belongs in a peculiar manner to the subj ect of our judgments, and even that in the subject there is an aspect of existence which is absent in the predicate. And should it now be said that the existence which belongs to the subject is not the same as that which belongs to the predicate; that whereas the existence of the subject is psychical, that of the predicate is ideal, I must ask for proof of this assertion, for the existence of the subject, in my judgment, does not appear to be psychical, but objective and real; quite as objective, in fact, as that of the predicate. Moreover, if the existence of the subject in presentation is psychical, how comes it that in thought the existence which is referred to that self-same subject is not psychical but objective? This is a mystery, perhaps, which is due to the nature of thought, whose function it is to distinguish existences and meanings which, in reality, are not distinct. But thought, it is admitted, must work upon the data of experience. If then, in the product of thought, objective existence and meaning are distinguished from the psychical existence of thought itself, it is only reasonable to infer that objective and psychical existence, not-self and self, have been distinct throughout the process, even to its basis in sense-experience itself.
That such a distinction of subject and object is a datum even of perceptual experience I have already attempted to show.{26} In perceptual experience we certainly come into immediate contact with reality, and upon this our knowledge of reality depends. But the reality which is 'given' in perceptual experience is not psychical but objective. Reality is presented to us, I will not say as material, but, at any rate, as something quite distinct, quite different, from ' me.' Again, I shall be told that I am introducing thought-distinctions into my description of sentient-experience. And it may be that I am; for thought is involved in all perception. But if such a fundamental and universal distinction as this is not to be included in the data of sentient experience, where are you going to draw the line? Sentient experience is not mere feeling, as Mr. Bradley fully acknowledges, for feeling is itself an abstraction. But as soon as we get beyond the stage of mere feeling we find thought-distinction. Mr. Bradley seems to admit this also, for he speaks of 'the sensuous infinitude' which belongs to the 'presented subject' in a judgment, by which he means that it has plurality of features in its content, the details of which are indefinitely related to something outside.{27} And I take it that it is the subject as presented in sense-perception that is here referred to, since it is called a presented subject. In any case, we are told that in sense-experience there is a confused relatedness which is not the presentation itself, qua presentation (though why what is presented should be described as ' confused ' I do not understand, since it is usually perfectly clear and distinct so far as concerns the objects upon which attention is focussed, and this focussing may be instantaneous); and it would seem that the confused relatedness and the presentation are not one and the same thing, even in sense-experience. While if, in reply, I am told that even this 'confused relatedness' is due to abstraction and so to thought-analysis, then certainly in what is left of sentient experience there will be no distinction of subject and object; but surely it is Mr. Bradley now and not myself who is guilty of abstraction; and such an attenuated fragment of experience is clearly not identical with presentation, still less with reality, nor does Mr. Bradley claim that it is.
§ 74. Why, then, is reality identified with sentient experience? We have already discussed one reason, viz., that Mr. Bradley cannot conceive of an existing object or quality from which all perception and feeling have been removed. This reason we found to be inconclusive, since most people can imagine 'pieces of existence' and 'facts,' viz., historical and absent facts, from which all perception and feeling have been removed. Yet, though Mr. Bradley's experience would appear to be abnormal in this respect, 'feeling' and sense-perception are undoubtedly very closely connected with the idea of reality; and it is upon this fact at bottom that Mr. Bradley's doctrine seems to be based. The 'this' of sense-perception, he says,
brings a sense of superior reality, a sense which is far from being wholly deceptive and untrue. For all our knowledge, in the first place, arises from the 'this.' It is the one source of our experience, and every element of the world must submit to pass through it. And the 'this,' secondly, has the genuine feature of ultimate reality. With however great imperfection and inconsistency it owns an individual character. The 'this' is real for us in a sense in which nothing else is real.{28}
Now, the 'this' is defined for us as "the positive feeling of direct experience." Hence the transition is easy from the doctrine that this "feeling of direct experience" is the source of all knowledge of reality and itself possesses a genuine feature of reality, to the doctrine that, as sentient experience in general, it is reality.
Mr. Bradley, to do him justice, does not explicitly make this transition, though I cannot help thinking that he really has made it in his own mind, and that it underlies his general position. At any rate, it will be worth while to discuss how far, and in what sense, the 'this' of sense-perception does possess the genuine feature of reality; and in order not to misinterpret, let me again quote from Appearance and Reality.
Reality is being in which there is no division of content from existence, no loosening of 'what' from 'that.' Reality, in short, means what it stands for, and stands for what it means. And the 'this' possesses to some extent the same wholeness of character. Both the 'this' and reality, we may say, are immediate. But reality is immediate because it includes and is superior to mediation. It develops, and it brings to unity, the distinctions it contains. The 'this' is immediate at a level below distinctions. Its elements are but conjoined, and are not connected. And its content, hence, is unstable, and essentially tends to disruption, and by its own nature must pass beyond the being of the 'this'. But every 'this' still shows a passing aspect of undivided singleness. In the mental background specially such a fused unity remains a constant factor and can never be dissipated. And it is such an unbroken wholeness which gives the sense of individual reality. When we turn from mere ideas to sensations, we experience in the 'this' a revelation of freshness and life. And that revelation, if misleading, is never quite untrue.{29}
The reason, then, why the 'this' seems to bring us into immediate touch with reality is because of its immediacy, its undivided singleness, its fused unity. Unity and immediacy, moreover, apparently mean the same thing, for 'immediacy' is defined as the union or unity of a 'what' and a 'that.' Now the question is, what is meant by this unity of a 'what' and a 'that.' It seems to mean two things between which Mr. Bradley hardly makes any distinction, viz., (1) the unity of subject and predicate before analysis, and (2) the unity of objective meaning and psychical fact.
§ 75. Let us examine this unity first in the sense of a unity between objective meaning and psychical fact. I do not think there can be any doubt that the unity of the 'this' does bear such a signification in Mr. Bradley's mind. For the 'this 'is described either as 'the positive feeling of direct experience,' which is clearly something psychical and subjective, or it is identified with 'confused relatedness,' the objective aspect in presentation; and this 'confused relatedness' and the subjective feature of presentation are, as we know, for Mr. Bradley, one and the same. Again, in a passage already quoted,{30} 'content' and 'psychical being' are opposed to one another as a 'what' and a 'that' while the ideality of the 'what,' since it is attributed precisely to this alienation of content and psychical existence, clearly indicates that in the subject or 'that' content and psychical existence are one.{31} Lastly, the ambiguity of Mr. Bradley's use of the term 'fact' points to the same conclusion. 'Existence' is either a series of events or of facts; facts are either events or what is directly experienced; and "any aspect of direct experience, or again of an event, may itself be loosely styled a fact or event, so far as you consider it as a qualifying adjective of one."{32} It is clear, then, that the only kind of 'existence' which Mr. Bradley admits is 'psychical existence,' and that when he speaks of the immediacy of presentation as the unity of a 'what' and a 'that,' or of a 'what' which is not sundered from its 'that,' and turned from fact into truth, he means to say that objective content and psychical existence are one.
Now, many times have I tried to find such a unity about the facts of presentation, but I must confess that I have always signally failed. True, the existence and the content which belong to what I perceive are not separated; and it may be that I do not always distinguish that objective existence from my psychical act; but, in any case, I do not confuse the two existences, or take them to be one, or discover any sort of unity about them. Either we are conscious of our own psychical existence in an act of perception, or we are not. If we are, it is distinct from the existence which belongs to the object; and if we are not, there is no question of psychical existence at all but only of objective existence. I may be mistaken in thinking that there is a minimum of distinction between subject and object in sense-perception but, whatever else happens, they are certainly not given as one. Still less are they thought of as one in retrospection (except in an idealist theory). Moreover, the 'superior sense of reality' and the peculiar freshness and life which attends sense-perception, seem to belong to the objective and not to the subjective element, for sensation in itself is no more living and real than thought or volition.
The 'genuine feature of reality' which is given in presentation, therefore, provides neither ground for, nor confirmation of, the thesis that Reality is Sentient Experience. For that 'feature' belongs to the objective, and not to the 'sentient' aspect of presentation. And if it be said that the two aspects are ultimately one, I must ask on what grounds the assertion is made. If as a datum of experience, I cannot admit it. If, on the other hand, it is affirmed as a metaphysical hypothesis, my answer is that in identifying reality with sentient experience, you have identified it with what is, according to your own theory, a one-sided abstraction. And this is so whatever interpretation be put upon sentient experience, for sentient experience, as the term 'sentient' implies, and as Mr. Bradley admits, is essentially psychical, and the psychical element in presentation is acknowledged to be but one aspect of the whole.
§ 76. There is, however, another sense in which the unity of a presented 'this' may be understood. It may mean the unity of 'that' and 'what,' or of subject and predicate; and in this case it is true that in presentation the aspects of 'what' and 'that' are not divorced. What we perceive is a concrete thing, and it is only by thought that we analyse it into subject and predicate. Moreover in what we perceive, content and objective existence are not separated, but form one whole. But, on the other hand, we do not always perceive a single thing. The 'subject' which is given in the 'this' is not always " a single self-subsistent being." It may be a 'garden,' for instance, which, though in a certain sense it has a unity for thought and hence is denoted by a single name, does not seem to be given as a unity. In fact, if we keep strictly to sentience and exclude thought, I cannot discover any unity at all about presentation apart from the unity of consciousness which it implies. What is presented is much diversified, especially if the presentation be for sight. The parts of what is presented are 'conjoined,' and may be said to 'co-exist,' but they do not form one integral whole, nor can I find in them any unity below relation and ideas.{33} There is a certain 'togetherness' about them, but that is insufficient. Mr. Bradley requires an indivisible, not merely an undivided, whole, and the object of perception is certainly not given as indivisible even if it be given as one.
True, an act of perception is one, qua psychical act, since the possibility of apprehending many things together, even if merely conjoined, presupposes a unity, as Kant showed; and, again, the psychical element in presentation -- perception itself -- is referred to the mind or the self, which we regard as a unity. But this self-reference, like the objective reference to which it is opposed, is admittedly a function of thought, not of sentient experience as such. For me, indeed, the deliverances of thought are as valid and more valid than those of sentient-experience; but for Mr. Bradley this is not so: thought-content is mere appearance, not reality. Hence that what we experience at any given moment should on its psychical side appear as "a single individual experience" is insufficient for his purpose; for what he seeks is a real unity, which the unities predicated as a result of thought abstractions according to his principles can never be. Moreover, if this unity is to be real, it should come from the objective and not from the subjective or psychical side of experience.
§ 77. Mr. Bradley's constant appeal to 'felt wholes,' therefore, is in vain. For if he means by the latter what is perceived in external perception, this is never 'given' as a felt-whole, but rather as distinct objects accompanied by, but not fused with, a vague background; and about such a presentation there is no unity except for thought. While if what is meant is a psychical feeling, there is still no felt-unity or felt-whole which can be clearly recognised as such until we reflect, and when we do reflect the felt-whole is so indistinguishably mixed up with reference to the self, that it is impossible to determine introspectively whether apart from the self there is any felt-whole at all. Doubtless "all that we suffer, and do and are at any one time forms a psychical totality;" but that totality does not include the objects about which we think, nor is it recognised as a totality except by thought. We feel, perhaps, "the co-existing mass" of sensation which constitutes the bodily 'tone,' but we do not feel directly the psychical unity which underlies it and which it presupposes, though belief in such a unity has instinctively arisen in our minds. Mr. Bradley, in his psychical analysis of presentation, seems to me to have read into the introspective data of experience pre-conceived metaphysical ideas. He has found in sentient experience what he looked for, felt-wholes and unities below the level of distinctions; but he has found them precisely because he looked for them, and not because they are really there as clear and unambiguous data of experience. If the subject is not given as distinct from the object nor one object as distinct from another, at any rate they are not given together as one and individual.
§ 78. A similar fallacy seems to characterise Mr. Bradley's attempt to show that in the immediacy of the 'this,' reality is present as a whole, and in his further attempt to reconcile the apparent fragmentariness and exclusiveness of a presented 'this' with the all-inclusive nature of reality itself. I cannot discover that "sensuous infinitude" of which he speaks. I admit that the 'this' has 'ragged edges' which imply other existences from which, in a sense, "it has been torn;"{34} but all that this means for me is either that as a rule a number of things are presented side by side, or that it is difficult to explain any individual thing except by comparison with other things. Purposes, functions, transient actions all direct our thoughts from the individual to something outside, apart from which they cannot be understood. The 'this' is self-transcendant, as Mr. Bradley says. Its inner nature leads our thoughts to pass from it to a 'higher totality' in which it is but a finite element or part. But whether this 'higher totality' is a concrete whole which is identical with reality itself, or whether it is merely a rational plan or design which is manifest in finite and individual existents, is not proved by the mere psychological fact that our thoughts must pass from the 'this' to something outside it and that even then the content of the 'this' is not fully exhausted or explained. Either hypothesis will harmonise so far with the data of experience, and we must have recourse to other considerations in order to decide between the two.
Here, as elsewhere in Appearance and Reality, Mr. Bradley seems to beg the whole question by the very form in which he has chosen to describe the facts; and it is only by interpreting his psychological descriptions in the light of his metaphysical theory that they can possibly be understood, and the apparently gratuitous conclusions which he draws obtain even a semblance of validity. For instance, it is said that the inner nature of the 'this' leads not merely our thoughts, but it, (the 'this' itself), to pass outside itself to a higher totality. And this higher totality is assumed to be a real and not merely an ideal totality, and again not merely a totality but a real and indivisible whole, for we are told that the very exclusiveness of the 'this' involves the reference of itself beyond itself, and is but a proof of its necessary absorption in the Absolute.{35}
§ 79. Another instance of the influence of his metaphysics upon his psychology is Mr. Bradley's psychological (for apparently it is psychological) dictum that 'product must not be separated from process.' Taken as a universal proposition, the principle is false, for whether we can legitimately separate product and process surely depends upon whether they are really distinct, as sometimes in the physical world they are. Of course, assuming the metaphysical standpoint of Appearance and Reality to be valid, it is clearly illicit to separate the product, appearances, from the psychical process by which they are supposed to be at once differentiated and re-united in an immanent Ground. But the validity of this position cannot be taken for granted. Hence it is manifestly illogical on Mr. Bradley's part to assume a principle which presupposes the validity of his metaphysical position, and to use that principle not only to refute the arguments of opponents, but also to establish the very position upon the validity of which it depends. Nor is the application of this principle to the psychology of experience a success. For, even granting that 'unities below relations' and 'felt-wholes' are among the data of sentient experience, we have no direct experience whatsoever of the process by which the so-called product, thought-distinctions and relations, arises. All we know is that psychoses in which sensation is comparatively predominant, are succeeded by psychoses in which distinctions and relations have taken its place, and that between the two there is what Professor James calls 'a continuous transition.' To say that relational appearances emerge within 'the felt totality' or that thought-distinctions 'break out of it,' is to speak metaphorically. Of the process by which sentience is displaced by thought, introspection tells us nothing. Consequently, the Bradleian principle of non-separation between product and process is inapplicable. There are no products and processes to separate, unless we make a gratuitous assumption to the effect that thought-distinctions are evolved from a sentient ground.
§ 80. This being the case, our only alternative is to choose whether we will accept the deliverances of thought or of sentience as more adequate to reveal the nature of reality. Mr. Bradley somewhat inconsistently (for it is the marked Intellectualism of his criterion of truth that has brought down upon him the ire of the pragmatists) seems to prefer the latter, on the ground that sentience gives a superior sense of reality to which the relational form of thought can never be equated and in regard to which it must ever remain a compromise, an unsuccessful attempt to "unite differences which have broken out in the felt-totality." As against the Hegelian identification of Thought and Reality, Mr. Bradley's argument is probably valid, though it seems to me a pity that he should have identified Reality with sentient experience, since he is forced to re-interpret this almost immediately as an experience which is not, but which includes, sentience, as it includes thought and volition and all other forms of psychical reality. But I cannot agree that reality is identical with either thought or with sentient experience, for it seems to me that in both, objective content and psychical existence are really distinct. Mr. Bradley assumes throughout that all existence is psychical and that at bottom experience and the experienced, presentation and the presented, are one. But though I grant that in the presentation of a concrete object its 'what' and its 'that', its 'meaning' and its 'existence' are united, Mr. Bradley's arguments have entirely failed to convince me that the 'existence ' here in question is psychical existence, and not rather the existence which belongs to the object, which is quite distinct from the psychical act of perception in my mind. This being so, the question for me is not whether reality is thought or sentient experience, but whether in thought or in sentient experience reality is better known. And of the answer to this question there can be no doubt. For thought is admittedly a higher form of cognition than sentience, which is hardly cognition at all ; and it is precisely on this account that thoughts seem to take the place of and to be preferred instead of, but not as well as, sensations, whenever it is a question of knowledge. Sentient experience, like anything else, can become the object of thought. Indeed, as Mr. Bradley acknowledges, 'there is nothing which cannot become the object of thought.' And this being so, given a satisfactory criterion of truth, there would seem to be no reason why thought should not be capable of giving us adequate knowledge of reality.
§ 81. My conclusion, then, is that the thesis 'Reality is Sentient Experience' and 'Reality is one and individual' are hypotheses or theories, not introspective facts, nor yet confirmed by introspective facts, which can only be made to harmonise with these theories by reading into them features that are not given and by excluding others that are. Mr. Bradley's account of the psychology of experience is inaccurate his assumptions gratuitous his terminology ambiguous, and his inferences invalid. The subjective and objective senses of terms such as 'existence' and 'fact' are hopelessly confused. What is not given as distinct in the first instance is assumed to be identical what is not given as divided, to be indivisible and one. Felt-wholes and underlying unities are discovered, though none such are to be found among the data of sentient experience. And, finally, thought-distinctions are declared to be the inseparable product of the evolution of this sentient experience, though for introspection the most we can say is that the latter is the antecedent of the former. These fallacies destroy the conclusiveness of all Mr. Bradley's arguments from psychological data; while his assumption that in sentient experience esse is percipi, or that feeling and reality are one, gives to Appearance and Reality a subjective tone which is repugnant, not only to realists, but also to more objective idealists, and of this impression it is, as Professor Mackenzie remarks, difficult to get rid. Still Appearance and Reality is, after all, not subjective but objective Idealism; and as a metaphysic of the Absolute is a theory which claims to interpret the universe as a whole, we shall have to examine it in a later chapter from a more metaphysical point of view.
{1} Appearance and Reality, p. 76.
{2} For a discussion of some of Mr. Bradley's arguments see chap. xii.
{3} loc cit. p. 70. This statement is not explained by Mr. Bradley, but it refers, I take it, to a purely psychological theory of cognition.
{4} Ibid.
{5} loc cit.,p. 313.
{6} Ibid., p. 327.
{7} Appearance and Reality, chap. xiv., p. 144.
{8} Ibid. p. 145
{9} Ibid. p. 301.
{10} loc. cit. Mind, N.S. 59, p. 314.
{11} Vide chaps. ix., x.
{12} Appearance and Reality, pp. 144, 145.
{13} Appearance and Reality, p. 301.
{14} Ibid. p. 190 and cf. p. 317.
{15} Appearance and Reality, p. 301.
{16} Ibid., p. 301 (italics mine).
{17} Ibid., p. 302.
{19} Ibid., pp. 163, 164.
{19} Ibid., p. 164.
{20} Ibid., pp. 168, 169.
{21} Ibid., p. 175.
{22} Appearance and Reality, p. 170.
{23} Ibid., pp. 27, 28.
{24} Ibid., p. 175.
{25} cf. Appearances and Reality, p. 301.
{26} cf. § 52.
{27} Appearance and Reality, p. 176.
{28} Ibid., pp. 224, 225.
{29} p. 225.
{30} Ibid., p. 301 (cf. supra, § 68).
{31} Ibid., cf. pp. 165, 168.
{32} Ibid., p. 317, n. 1 (cf. supra, § 68).
{33} cf. § 29.
{34} Appearance and Reality, p. 176.
{35} Ibid. p. 228.