Mr Bradley’s whole work is ruled by the distinction between “Appearance” and “Reality,” which gives his book a title.  On the one hand there is the Absolute Reality, spoken of as perfect, and described as all—­comprehensive and harmonious throughout.  Neither change nor time nor any relation can belong to it.  But intelligence works by discrimination and comparison; knowledge implies relations; it is, therefore, excluded from reality.  Truth is mere appearance.  The same judgment must be passed on our moral activity.  We strive after and perhaps reach an ideal, or, as Mr Bradley says, we aim at satisfying a desire; and this, too, is a process far removed from reality.[1] Goodness, like truth, is mere appearance.

[Footnote 1:  Appearance and Reality, pp. 402, 410.]

This needs no elaboration.  If all predication involves relation, and relation is excluded from reality,[1] then no predicate—­not even truth or goodness—­can be asserted of the real.  Nay more, to be consistent, we ought not even to say that reality or the Absolute (for the two terms are here interchangeable) is perfect, or one, or all-comprehensive, or harmonious:  for all these are predicates. Ens realissimum is the only ens reale; all else is mere appearance.

[Footnote 1:  Ibid., pp. 32-34.]

Just here, however, lies an indication of another line of thought.  For what is an appearance, and what is it that appears?  It can only be reality that thus appears; the ‘mere’ appearance is yet an ’appearance of reality.’  It might seem that this is to catch, not at a straw, but at the shadow of a straw.  For if we say that ‘reality appears,’ are we not thereby predicating something of reality, making it enter into relation?  But let that pass.  Among these appearances we may be able to distinguish degrees of significance or of adequacy, nay—­strange as it may seem to the reader who has followed Mr Bradley’s first line of thought—­“degrees of reality.”  Relations are excluded from reality; and degree is a relation; but reality has degrees.  The logic is unsatisfactory, but the conclusion may perhaps have a value of its own.

Here, then, is another view of the universe—­not an unchanging, relationless, eternal reality, but varying degrees of reality manifested in that complex process which we call sometimes the world and sometimes ‘experience,’ But the two views are connected.  For it is assumed that the Absolute Reality is harmonious and all-comprehensive; and it is further asserted that these two characteristics of harmony and comprehensiveness may be taken as criteria of the “degree of reality” possessed by any “appearance.”  The more harmonious anything is—­the fewer its internal discrepancies or contradictions—­the higher is its degree of reality; and the greater its comprehensiveness—­the fewer predicates left outside it—­the higher also is its degree of reality.  No attempt is made at a measured scale of degrees of reality, such, for example, as is offered by the Hegelian dialectic; but a sort of rough classification of various ‘appearances’ is offered.  In this classification a place is given to goodness which is comparatively high, and yet “subordinate” and “self-contradictory.” [1]