real differences, and, on the other hand, to insist that the true
ground of this union of identity and difference is always, to
us, and to “thought,” something not manifest, but only
presupposed as “beyond thought” What are we to hold of this
doctrine?
I. Thought does Develope its own Varieties of Internal Meaning
Our first comment must repeat what several of Mr. Bradley’s critics have noticed. This is, that within at least one, perhaps limited, but still in any case for us mortals important region, Mr. Bradley himself finds and reports the working of a very “self-evident” principle of “diversity in unity.”
This is the region in which thought is itself the object whose process and movement, whose paradoxes and whose endless series of internal distinctions, we observe, or experience, while we read Mr. Bradley’s book, or any similarly deep examination of the realm of the “intellect.” In his Logic Mr. Bradley long since gave us a brilliant account of the movement of thought, — an account that he here lays at the basis of his discussion. The truth of a considerable portion of this earlier analysis of the thinking process, I should unhesitatingly accept. Now it may be indeed that the processes of thought, as Mr. Bradley examines them, constitute not only a relatively insignificant aspect of Reality, but also a portion to be labelled “Appearance.” Yet the point here in question is not, for the moment, the dignity or the extent of the thinking process in the life of the universe, but solely the exemplary value of the thinking process as an instance of a “self-evident,” even if extremely abstract union of unity and variety, of identity and diversity of aspects, in an objective realm. For thought, too, is a kind of life, and belongs to the realm of Reality, even if only as other appearances belong.
What we in general mean by this comment may first be very briefly developed. The special applications will indeed detain us longer. Mr. Bradley requires us to point out to him a case where diversities shall be “complementary aspects of a process
