be used of reality in a somewhat vague sense, as it were jure dignitatis and to have as little ethical significance as “right honourable” when applied to a politician or “reverend” to a clergyman:  cases in which it might be consistent to say that right honourable gentlemen manifest various degrees of honour and dishonour, or that reverend gentlemen are worthy of various degrees of reverence and the opposite.  All the details of the phenomenal world are bound together by chains of necessity; each is an essential part of the sum-total.[1] How can the distinction of good and evil apply as between these parts?

[Footnote 1:  Appearance and Reality-Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]

We may speak of parts as higher or lower; and Mr Bradley defines the “lower” as “that which, to be made complete, would have to undergo a more total transformation of its nature."[1] The meaning of this is not clear.  The reference may be to the complete state which a thing may reach in process of growth.  Thus an early stage of a rose-bud may be said to be “lower” than its later stage because it requires a greater transformation before it produces the bloom.  But here ‘lower’ does not mean ethically lower, unless immaturity be confused with evil.  Or the complete state may be regarded as the type of some order or class, from which different individuals differ in greater or less degree.  This meaning is not suggested by the author; and it could have ethical implication only if the type had been first of all shown to have an ethical value.  Or again, the completeness referred to may be that which is alone complete in the strict sense of the word, namely, the universe.  And we might say that a rose-leaf would require greater transformation in order to become complete in this sense than a rose-bush, or that the act of giving a cup of cold water was less complete than the far-reaching activity say of the first Napoleon.  But this difference in completeness would not entail a corresponding difference in moral worth or goodness.

[Footnote 1:  Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]

Where all stages are essential, it is not possible to say that one is good and another evil.  Is not the good something that ought to be striven for, attained, and preserved? and is not evil something that ought not to be at all?  And how can we say that any part ought not to be when every part is essential?

From the monistic view of reality, as set forth by Mr Bradley, there is no direct route to the distinction between good and evil.  If the distinction is reached at all, it will be found to be psychological rather than cosmical, to be relative to the attitude of the human mind which contemplates the facts, and in this strict sense to be, what Mr Bradley calls it, appearance.