The attempt to resolve the thing into properties, each a real thing, taken somehow together with in- 22 APPEARANCE.
dependent relations, has proved an obvious failure. And we are forced to see, when we reflect, that a relation standing alongside of its terms is a delu- sion. If it is to be real, it must be so somehow at the expense of the terms, or, at least, must be some- thing which appears in them or to which they belong. A relation between A and 2? implies really a substan- tial foundation within them. This foundation, if we say that A is like to B, is the identity X which holds these differences together. And so with space and time — everywhere there must be a whole embracing what is related, or there would be no differences and no relation. It seems as if a reality possessed differ- ences, A and B} incompatible with one another and also with itself. And so in order, without contra- diction, to retain its various properties, this whole consents to wear the form of relations between them. And this is why qualities are found to be some in- compatible and some compatible. They are all different, and, on the other hand, because belonging to one whole, are all forced to come together. And it is only where they come together distantly by the help of a relation, that they cease to conflict. On the other hand, where a thing fails to set up a relation between its properties, they are contrary at once. Thus colours and smells live together at peace in the reality; for the thing divides itself, and so leaves them merely side by side within itself. But colour collides with colour, because their special identity drives them together. And here again, if the iden- tity becomes relational by help of space, they are outside one another, and are peaceful once more. The " contrary," in short, consists of differences pos- sessed by that which cannot find the relation which serves to couple them apart. It is marriage at- tempted without a modus vivendi. But where the whole, relaxing its unity, takes the form of an ar- rangement, there is co-existence with concord.
I have set out the above mainly because of the SUBSTANTIVE AND ADJECTIVE. 23 light which it throws upon the nature of the " con- trary." It affords no solution of our problem of inher- ence. It tells us how we are forced to arrange things in a certain manner, but it does not justify that ar- rangement The thing avoids contradiction by its dis- appearance into relations, and by its admission of the adjectives to a standing of their own. But it avoids contradiction by a kind of suicide. It can give no rational account of the relations and the terms which it adopts, and it cannot recover the real unity, with- out which it is nothing. The whole device is a clear makeshift. It consists in saying to the outside world, " I am the owner of these my adjectives," and to the properties, " I am but a relation, which leaves you your liberty." And to itself and for itself it is the futile pretence to have both characters at once. Such an arrangement may work, but the theoretical problem is not solved.
The immediate unity, in which facts come to us, has been broken up by experience, and later by reflection. The thing with its adjectives is a device for enjoying at once both variety and concord. But the distinctions, once made, fall apart from the thing, and away from one another. And our attempt to understand their relations brought us round merely to a unity, which confesses itself a pretence, or else falls back upon the old undivided substance, which admits of no relations. We shall see the hopelessness of its dilemma more clearly when we have examined how relation stands to quality. But this demands another chapter.
I will, in conclusion, dispose very briefly of a possible suggestion. The distinctions taken in the thing are to be held only, it may be urged, as the ways in which we regard it The thing itself maintains its unity, and the aspects of adjective and substantive are only our points of view. Hence they do no injury to the real. But this defence is futile, since the question is how without 24 APPEARANCE.
24 APPEARANCE.
error we may think of reality. If then your col- lection of points of view is a defensible way of sc thinking, by all' means apply it to the thing, and make an end of our puzzle. Otherwise the thing, without the points of view, appears to have no character at all, and they, without the thing, to possess no reality — even if they could be made compatible among themselves, the one with the other. In short, this distinction, drawn between the fact and our manner of regarding it, only serves to double the original confusion. There will now be an inconsistency in my mind as well as in the thing; and, far from helping, the one will but aggravate the other.
CHAPTER III.
RELATION AND QUALITY.
It must have become evident that the problem, discussed in the last chapter, really turns on the respective natures of quality and relation. And the reader may have anticipated the conclusion we are now to reach. The arrangement of given facts into relations and qualities may be necessary in practice, but it is theoretically unintelligible. The reality, so characterized, is not true reality, but is appearance.
And it can hardly be maintained that this char- acter calls for no understanding — that it is a unique way of being which the reality possesses, and which we have got merely to receive. For it most evid- ently has ceased to be something quite immediate. It contains aspects now distinguished and taken as differences, and which tend, so far as we see, to a further separation. And, if the reality really has a way of uniting these in harmony, that way assuredly is not manifest at first sight. On our own side those distinctions which even consciously we make may possibly in some way give the truth about reality. But, so long as we fail to justify them and to make them intelligible to ourselves, we are bound, so far, to set them down as mere appear- ance.
The object of this chapter is to show that the very essence of these ideas is infected and con- tradicts itself. Our conclusion briefly will be this. Relation presupposes quality, and quality relation. Each can be something neither together 26 APPEARANCE.
with, nor apart from, the other; and the vicious circle in which they turn is not the truth about reality.
i. Qualities are nothing without relations. In trying to exhibit the truth of this statement, I will lay no weight on a considerable mass of evidence. This, furnished by psychology, would attempt to show how qualities are variable by changes of rela- tion. The differences we perceive in many cases seem to have been so created. But I will not appeal to such an argument, since I do not see that it could prove wholly the non-existence of original and independent qualities. And the line of proof through the necessity of contrast for perception has, in my opinion, been carried beyond logical limits. Hence, though thesq^ considerations have without doubt an important bearing on our problem, I prefer here to disregard them. And I do not think that they are necessary.
We may proceed better to our conclusion in the following way. You can never, we may argue, find qualities without relations. Whenever you take them so, they are made so, and continue so, by an operation which itself implies relation. Their plurality gets for us all its meaning through rela- tions; and to suppose it otherwise in reality is wholly indefensible. I will draw this out in greater detail.
To find qualities without relations is surely im- possible. In the field of consciousness, even when we abstract from the relations of identity and dif- ference, they are never independent One is to- gether with, and related to, one other, at the least, — in fact, always to more than one. Nor will an appeal to a lower and undistinguished state of mind, where in one feeling are many aspects, assist us in any way. I admit the existence of such states with- out any relation, but I wholly deny there the presence of qualities. For if these felt aspects, RELATION AND QUALITY. 27 while merely felt, are to be called qualities proper, they are so only for the observation of an outside observer. And then for him they are given as aspects — that is, together with relations. In short, if you go back to mere unbroken feeling, you have no relations and no qualities. But if you come to what is distinct, you get relations at once.
I presume we shall be answered in this way. Even though, we shall be told, qualities proper can not be discovered apart from relations, that is no real disproof of their separate existence. For we are well able to distinguish them and to consider them by themselves. And for this perception certainly an operation of our minds is required. So far, therefore, as you say, what is different must be distinct, and, in consequence, related. But this relation does not really belong to the reality. The relation has existence only for us, and as a way of our getting to know. But the distinction, for all that, is based upon differences in the actual; and these remain when our relations have fallen away or have been removed.
But such an answer depends on the separation of product from process, and this separation seems indefensible. The qualities, as distinct, are always made so by an action which is admitted to imply relation. They are made so, and, what is more, they are emphatically kept so. And you cannot ever get your product standing apart from its process. Will you say, the process is not essential? But that is a conclusion to be proved, and it is monstrous to assume it Will you try to prove it by analogy? It is possible for many purposes to accept and employ the existence of processes and relations which do not affect specially the inner nature of objects. But the very possibility of so distinguishing in the end between inner and outer, and of setting up the inner as absolutely indepen- dent of all relation, is here in question. Mental 28 APPEARANCE.
28 APPEARANCE.
operations such as comparison, which presuppose in the compared qualities already existing, could in no case prove that these qualities depend on no relations at all. But I cannot believe that this is a matter to be decided by analogy, for the whole case is briefly this. 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 any- where 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. The argument that in perception one quality must be given first and before others, and therefore cannot be relative, is hardly worth mentioning. What is more natural than for qualities always to have come to us in some conjunction, and never alone?
We may go further. Not only is the ignoring of the process a thing quite indefensible — even if it blundered into truth — but there is evidence that it gives falsehood. For the result bears internally the character of the process. The manyness of the qualities cannot, in short, be reconciled with their simplicity. Their plurality depends on relation, and, without that relation, they are not distinct. But, if not distinct, then not different, and therefore not qualities.
I am not urging that quality without difference is in every sense impossible. For all I know, creatures may exist whose life consists, for themselves, in one unbroken simple feeling; and the arguments urged against such a possibility in my judgment come short. And, if you want to call this feeling a quality, by all means gratify your desire. But then remember that the whole point is quite irrelevant. For no one is contending whether the universe is or is not a quality in this sense; but the question is entirely as to qualities. And a universe con- RELATION AND QUALITY. 20, fined to one feeling would not only not be qualities, but it would fail even to be one quality, as different from others and as distinct from relations. Our question is really whether relation is essential to differences.
We have seen that in fact the two are never found apart We have seen that the separation by abstraction is no proof of real separateness. And now we have to urge, in short, that any separateness implies separation, and so relation, and is therefore, when made absolute, a self-discrepancy. For con- sider, the qualities A and B are to be different from each other; and, if so, that difference must fall some- where. If it falls, in any degree or to any extent, outside A or B, we have relation at once. But, on the other hand, how can difference and otherness fall inside? If we have in A any such otherness, then inside A we must distinguish its own quality and its otherness. And, if so, then the unsolved problem breaks out inside each quality, and sepa- rates each into two qualities in relation. In brief, diversity without relation seems a word without meaning. And it is no answer to urge that plurality proper is not in question here. I am convinced of the opposite, but by all means, if you will, let us confine ourselves to distinctness and difference. I rest my argument upon this, that if there are no differences, there are no qualities, since all must fall into one. But, if there is any difference, then that implies a relation. Without a relation it has no meaning; it is a mere word, and not a thought; and no one would take it for a thought if he did not, in spite of his protests, import relation into it. And this is the point on which all seems to turn, Is it possible to think of qualities without thinking of distinct characters? Is it possible to think of these without some relation between them, either explicit, or else unconsciously supplied by the mind that tries only to apprehend? Have qualities without 30 APPEARANCE.
relation any meaning for thought? For myself, I am sure that they have none.
And I find a confirmation in the issue of the most thorough attempt to build a system on this' ground. There it is not too much to say that all the content of the universe becomes something very like an impossible illusion. The Reals are secluded and simple, simple beyond belief if they never suspect that they are not so. But our fruitful life, on the other hand, seems due to their persistence in imagin- ary recovery from unimaginable perversion. And they remain guiltless of all real share in these ambi- guous connections, which seem to make the world. They are above it, and fixed like stars in the firma- ment—if there only were a firmament.
2. We have found that qualities, taken without relations, have no intelligible meaning. Unfortun- ately, taken together with them, they are equally unintelligible. They cannot, in the first place, be wholly resolved into the relations. You may urge, indeed, that without distinction no difference is left; but, for all that, the differences will not disappear into the distinction. They must come to it, more or less, and they cannot wholly be made by it. I still insist that for thought what is not relative is nothing. But I urge, on the other hand, that nothings cannot be related, and that to turn quali- ties in relation into mere relations is impossible. Since the fact seems constituted by both, you may urge, if you please, that either one of them consti- tutes it. But if you mean that the other is not wanted, and that relations can somehow make the terms upon which they seem to stand, then, for my mind, your meaning is quite unintelligible. So far as I can see, relations must depend upon terms, just as much as terms upon relations. And the partial failure, now manifest, of the Dialectic Method seems connected with some misapprehension on this point.
RELATION AND QUALITY. 3 1 Hence the qualities must be, and must also be related. But there is hence a diversity which falls inside each quality. Each has a double character, as both supporting and as being made by the relation. It may be taken as at once condition and result, and the question is as to how it can combine this variety. For it must combine the diversity, and yet it fails to do so. A is both made, and is not made, what it is by relation; and these different aspects are not each the other, nor again is either A. If we call its diverse aspects a and a, then A is partly each of these. As a it is the difference on which distinction is based, while as a it is the distinctness that results from connection. A is really both somehow together as A (a — a). But (as we saw in Chapter ii.) without the use of a relation it is impossible to predicate this variety of A. And, on the other hand, with an in- ternal relation As unity disappears, and its contents are dissipated in an endless process of distinction. A at first becomes a in relation with a, but these terms themselves fall hopelessly asunder. We have got, against our will, not a mere aspect, but a new quality a, which itself stands in a relation; and hence (as we saw before with A) its content must be manifold. As going into the relation it itself is a*, and as resulting from the relation it itself is a*. And it combines, and yet cannot combine, these adjectives. We, in brief, are led by a principle of fission which conducts us to no end. Every quality in relation has, in consequence, a diversity within its own nature, and this diversity cannot immedi- ately be asserted of the quality. Hence the quality must exchange its unity for an internal relation. But, thus set free, the diverse aspects, because each something in relation, must each be something also beyond. This diversity is fatal to the internal unity of each; and it demands a new relation, and so on without limit. In short, qualities in a relation have turned out as unintelligible as were qualities 32 APPEARANCE.
without one. The problem from both sides has baffled us.
3. We may briefly reach the same dilemma from the side of relations. They are nothing intelligible, either with or without their qualities. In the first place, a relation without terms seems mere verbiage; and terms appear, therefore, to be something beyond their relation. At least, for myself, a relation which somehow precipitates terms which were not there before, or a relation which can get on somehow without terms, and with no differences beyond the mere ends of a line of connection, is really a phrase without meaning. It is, to my mind, a false abstrac- tion, and a thing which loudly contradicts itself; and I fear that I am obliged to leave the matter so. As I am left without information, and can discover with my own ears no trace of harmony, I am forced to conclude to a partial deafness in others. And hence a relation, we must say, without qualities is nothing.
But how the relation can stand to the qualities is, on the other side, unintelligible. If it is nothing to the qualities, then they are not related at all; and, if so, as we saw, they have ceased to be qualities, and their relation is a nonentity. But if it is to be something to them, then clearly we now shall require a new connecting relation. For the relation hardly can be the mere adjective of one or both of its terms; or, at least, as such it seems indefensible.1 And, being something itself, if it does not itself bear a relation to the terms, in what intelligible way will it succeed in being anything to them? But here 1 The relation is not the adjective of one term, for, if so, it does not relate. Nor for the same reason is it the adjective of each term taken apart, for then again there is no relation between them. Nor is the relation their common property, for then what keeps them apart? They are now not two terms at all, because not separate. And within this new whole, in any case, the pro- blem of inherence would break out in an aggravated form. But it seems unnecessary to work this all out in detail.
RELATION AND QUALITY. 33 again we are hurried off into the eddy of a hopeless process, since we are forced to go on finding new relations without end. The links are united by a link, and this bond of union is a link which also has two ends; and these require each a fresh link to connect them with the old. The problem is to find how the relation can stand to its qualities; and this problem is insoluble. If you take the connection as a solid thing, you have got to show, and you can- not show, how the other solids are joined to it. And, if you take it as a kind of medium or unsub- stantial atmosphere, it is a connection no longer. You find, in this case, that the whole question of the relation of the qualities (for they certainly in some way are related) arises now outside it, in precisely the same form as before. The original relation, in short, has become a nonentity, but, in becoming this, it has removed no element of the problem.
I will bring this chapter to an end. It would be easy, and yet profitless, to spin out its argument with ramifications and refinements. And for me to attempt to anticipate the reader's objections would probably be useless. I have stated the case, and I must leave it. The conclusion to which I am brought is that a relational way of thought — any one that moves by the machinery of terms and relations — must give appearance, and not truth. It is a make- shift, a device, a mere practical compromise, most necessary, but in the end most indefensible. We have to take reality as many, and to take it as one, and to avoid contradiction. We want to divide it, or to take it, when we please, as indivisible; to go as far as we desire in either of these directions, and to stop when that suits us. And we succeed, but succeed merely by shutting the eye, which if left open would condemn us; or by a perpetual oscilla- tion and a shifting of the ground, so as to turn our back upon the aspect we desire to ignore. But 34 APPEARANCE.
34 APPEARANCE.
when these inconsistencies are forced together, as in metaphysics they must be, the result is an open and staring discrepancy. And we cannot attribute this to reality; while, if we try to take it on our- selves, we have changed one evil for two. Our intellect, then, has been condemned to confusion and bankruptcy, and the reality has been left outside uncomprehended. Or rather, what is worse, it has been stripped bare of all distinction and quality. It is left naked and without a character, and we are covered with confusion.
The reader who has followed and has grasped the principle of this chapter, will have little need to spend his time upon those which succeed it. He will have seen that our experience, where relational, is not true; and he will have condemned, almost without a hearing, the great mass of phenomena. I feel, however, called on next to deal very briefly with Space and Time.
CHAPTER IV.
SPACE AND TIME.
The object of this chapter is far from being an attempt to discuss fully the nature of space or of time. It will content itself with stating our main justification for regarding them as appearance. It will explain why we deny that, in the character which they exhibit, they either have or belong to reality. I will first show this of space.
We have nothing to do here with the psychologi- cal origin of the perception. Space may be a pro- duct developed from non-spatial elements; and, if so, its production may have great bearing on the question of its true reality. But it is impossible for us to consider this here. For, in the first place, every attempt so to explain its origin has turned out a clear failure.1 And, in the second place, its reality would not be necessarily affected by the proof of its development Nothing can be taken as real because, for psychology, it is original; or, again, as unreal, because it is secondary. If it were a legiti- 1 I do not mean to say that I consider it to be original. On the contrary, one may have reason to believe something to be secondary, even though one cannot point out its foundation and origin. What has been called "extensity" appears to me (as onYred) to involve a confusion. When you know what you mean by it, it seems to turn out to be either spatial at once and down- right, or else not spatial at all. It seems useful, in part, only as long as you allow it to be obscure. Docs all j>erception of more \ and less (or all which docs not involve degree in the strict sense) imply space, or not? Any answer to this question would, I think, depose of "extensity" as otfered. But see Mind, iv. pp. 232-5.
36 APPEARANCE.
mate construction from elements that were true, then it might be derived only for our knowledge, and be original in fact. But so long as its attempted deri- vation is in part obscure and in part illusory, it is better to regard this whole question as irrelevant.
Let us then, taking space or extension simply as it is, enquire whether it contradicts itself. The reader will be acquainted with the difficulties that have arisen from the continuity and the discrete- ness of space. These necessitate the conclusion that space is endless, while an end is essential to its being. Space cannot come to a final limit, either within itself or on the outside. And yet, so long as it remains something always passing away, internally or beyond itself, it is not space at all. This dilemma has been met often by the ignoring of one aspect, but it has never been, and it will never be, con- fronted and resolved. And naturally, while it stands, it is the condemnation of space.
I am going to state it here in the form which exhibits, I think, most plainly the root of the con- tradiction, and also its insolubility. Space is a relation — which it cannot be; and it is a quality or substance — which again it cannot be. It is a peculiar form of the problem which we discussed in the last chapter, and is a special attempt to combine the irreconcilable. I will set out this puzzle antithetically.
i. Space is not a mere relation. For any space must consist of extended parts, and these parts clearly are spaces. So that, even if we could take our space as a collection, it would be a collection of solids. The relation would join spaces which would not be mere relations. And hence the collection, if taken as a mere inter-relation, would not be space. We should be brought to the proposilion that space is nothing but a relation of spaces. And this pro- position contradicts itself.
Again, from the other side, if any space is taken SPACE AND TIME. 37 as a whole, it is evidently more than a relation. It is a thing, or substance, or quality (call it what you please), which is clearly as solid as the parts which it unites. From without, or from within, it is quite as repulsive and as simple as any of its contents. The mere fact that we are driven always to speak of its parts should be evidence enough. What could be the parts of a relation?
2. But space is nothing but a relation. For, in the first place, any space must consist of parts; and, if the parts are not spaces, the whole is not space. Take then in a space any parts. These, it is assumed, must be solid, but they are obviously extended. If extended, however, they will them- selves consist of parts, and these again of further parts, and so on without end. A space, or a part of space, that really means to be solid, is a self- contradiction. Anything extended is a collection, a relation of extendeds, which again are relations of extendeds, and so on indefinitely. The terms are essential to the relation, and the terms do not exist. Searching without end, we never find any- thing more than relations; and we see that we can- not. Space is essentially a relation of what vanishes into relations, which seek in vain for their terms. It is lengths of lengths of— nothing that we can find.
And, from the outside again, a like conclusion is forced on us. We have seen that space vanishes internally into relations between units which never can exist. But, on the other side, when taken it- self as a unit, it passes away into the search for an illusory whole. It is essentially the reference of itself to something else, a process of endless passing beyond actuality. As a whole it is, briefly, the r l.ition of itself to a non-existent other. For take spac;e and as complete as you possibly can.
Still, if it has not definite boundaries, it is not space; and to make it end in a cloud, or in nothing, 38 APPEARANCE.