relations? How did it issue from the eternity of thought in order to project itself into time? Moreover, if the Absolute live in it, must not its every idea perforce be true? In Green’s philosophy there is no room for error and illusion, which can only be understood if we admit a certain degree of independence and spontaneity in the individual subject as against Absolute Consciousness. We can form no conception of objective reality as a system of relations, complete, fixed, and unchangeable from all eternity, since every new form which makes its appearance, every individual in his concrete physiognomy, becomes the centre in cosmic evolution of a fresh network of countless relations which tend to become more widely extended, more interwoven, and more complicated in successive moments. The reduction of the Absolute to the eternal contemplation of ideas eternally present to its consciousness amounts to the same thing as turning it into a caput mortuum, like the impassive deities of Epicurus in their blissful ease. We cannot conceive of a consciousness which is not life, development, perennial creation, and fruitful activity, nor of a thought which cannot be enriched by new relations, whilst preserving the coherency and identity of its fundamental laws; nor of any form of spirituality without qualitative development, or which is not manifested in original actions which cannot be foreseen. Pan-logism aims at the absorption of everything into a system of eternal relations, and must therefore inevitably end in denying the reality of that which is most vital and most concrete in the world of consciousness. If its premisses be granted, Bradley’s philosophy is the necessary conclusion.
4. The Reductio ad Absurdum of Pan-Logism in Bradley’s Philosophy. — Bradley[1] maintains that the world, as given to us by experience and as constructed by science in its concepts, is but an illusory appearance of a deeper reality of which philosophy should strive to sound the depths by speculative methods, after having exposed the contradictions latent in the
- ↑ Principles of Logic (London, 1883); Appearance and Reality (London, 1893).
