GIFFORD LECTURES
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FIRST SERIES
SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY
THE ONE, THE MANY, AND THE INFINITE
Section I. Mr. Bradley’s Problem
The closing lecture of the foregoing series has begun the statement of the doctrine of the Individual. The reality of Many within One, and the necessity of the union of the One and the Many, have been maintained, side by side with some account of the nature that, as I also maintain, ought to be attributed to the Individual, whether you consider the Absolute Individual, or the Individuals of our finite world, — the men whose wills are expressed in our life. Now I should be glad to allow the general theory to stand, for the present, simply as stated; and to postpone altogether, until the second series of these lectures, the further defence of the doctrine, — were it not that the most thorough, and in very many respects by far the most important contribution to pure Metaphysics which has of late years appeared in England, has made known a Theory of Being with which, in some of its most significant theses, I heartily agree, while, nevertheless, this very Theory of Being, as it has been stated by its author, undertakes to render wholly impossible, for our human minds, as now we are constituted, any explicit and detailed reconciliation of the One and the Many, or any positive theory of how Individuals find their real place in the Absolute. Defining and defending a conception of the Absolute as “one system,” whose contents are “experience,” Mr. Bradley, to whose well-known book,
