which Prof. Seth would perhaps not accept that the argument of which I have taken Mr. McTaggart as the representative is open to a similar criticism.
As Bradley assumes that the unity of which knowledge is in search is incompatible with its differences, Mr. McTaggart conversely assumes that the differences by which we seek to know the thing are incompatible with its unity. To know the thing we must know it in its abstract unity, the thisness which excludes its being this or that. But is not this simply to turn one's back on the most important lesson that philosophy since Kant has been endeavouring to teach, the distinction between the abstract and the concrete particular? This distinction is too familiar to dwell upon. For the present argument it means that "this" may be taken in a more abstract or in a more concrete sense, and it depends upon the sense in which we take it whether we shall admit that the individuality of the thing consists in its thisness or not. I may perhaps make this clear if I ask you to note that there seem to be three senses in which we use the term. We may mean in the first place by the "this" of a thing its bare existence. The thing we call a "this" is undoubtedly taken to exist—"referred to reality". The logical text-books would tell us that the term "this" denotes something, although at this early stage of its meaning they might hesitate to say what it connotes. It would be more in consonance with the foregoing analysis to say that mere existence for thought (mere denotation if you like) is at this stage the connotation of the term. At a further stage there is less difficulty. "This" means what is here and now. The thing is referred to a place of its own in the worlds of space and time. Besides its denotation, the text-books would say, it has the connotation of "being here and now". But, further, it may be taken to represent the thing in its complete individuality as unmistakably "this" and nothing else—completely differentiated from everything else by the peculiar relations in which it stands to them (and at the same time as we have seen rendered completely coherent and self-consistent). We may notice further that these three meanings though separable are not really separate or discontinuous with one another. They represent three stages in the development of the original concept. From the undifferentiated unity with which it starts, the mind moves onwards to its first most abstract judgment of reality in becoming conscious of a Something—a mere ἔστιν ὅτι—on thence it is carried to its determination under the forms of space and time as a here and now, and
