But if it is impossible to conceive qualities without relations, it is equally unintelligible to take qualities together with relations. For the qualities cannot be resolved into the relations. And, if taken with the relations, they \u00abmust be, and must also be related\u00bb (p. 31). But now afresh arises the problem as to how, in this instance, the variety involved in the also is reducible to the unity which each quality must by itself possess. For a quality, A, is made what it is both by its relations (since, as we have seen, these are essential to its being as a quality), and by something else, namely, by its own inner character. A has thus two aspects, both of which can be predicated of it. Yet \u00abwithout the use of a relation it is impossible to predicate this variety of A,\u00bb just as it was impossible, except by the use of a relation, to predicate the various qualities of one thing. We have therefore to say that, within A, both its own inner character, as a quality, and its relatedness to other facts, are themselves, as varieties, facts; but such facts as constitute the being of A, so that they are united by a new relation, namely, by the very relation which makes them constitutive of A. Thus, however, \u00abwe are led by a principle of fission which conducts us to no end.\u00bb \u00abThe quality must exchange its unity for an internal relation.\u00bb This diversity \u00abdemands a new relation, and so on without limit.\u00bb<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the \u00abmere conjunction,\u00bb if taken as such, is \u00abfor thought contradictory\u00bb (p. 565). For as soon as thought makes the conjunction its object, thought must \u00abhold in unity\u00bb the elements of the conjunction. But finding these elements diverse, thought \u00abcan of itself supply no internal bond by which to hold them together, nor has it any internal diversity by which to maintain them apart.\u00bb If one replies that the elements are offered to thought \u00abtogether and in conjunction,\u00bb Mr. Bradley retorts that the question is \u00abhow thought can think what is offered.\u00bb If thought were itself possessed of conjoining principles, of \u00aba \u2018together,\u2019 a \u2018between,\u2019 and an \u2018all at once,\u2019\u00bb as its own internal principle, it could use them to explain the conjunction offered. But, as a fact (p. 566), \u00abThought cannot accept tautology, and yet demands unity in diversity. But your offered conjunctions, on the other side, are for it no connections or ways of union. They are themselves merely other external things to be connected.\u00bb It is, then, \u00abidle from the outside to say to thought, \u2019Well, unite, but do not identify.\u2019 How can thought unite except so far as in itself it has a mode of union? To unite without an internal ground of connection and distinction, is to strive to bring together barely in the same point, and that is self-contradiction.\u00bb Things, then, \u00abare not contradictory because they are diverse,\u00bb but \u00abjust in so far as they appear as bare conjunctions.\u00bb Therefore it is that a mere together, \u00abin space or time, is for thought unsatisfactory and, in the end, impossible.\u00bb But, on the other hand, every such untrue view must be transcended, and the Real is not self-contradictory, despite its diversities, since their real unity is, in the Absolute, present.<\/p>\n All this being understood, let us undertake to define a map that shall be in this sense perfect, but that shall be drawn subject to one special condition. It would seem as if, in case our map-drawing powers were perfect, we could draw our map wherever we chose to draw it. Let us, then, choose, for once, to draw it within and upon a part of the surface of the very region that is to be mapped. What would be the result of trying to carry out this one purpose? To fix our ideas, let us suppose, if you please, that a portion of the surface of England is very perfectly levelled and smoothed, and is then devoted to the production of our precise map of England. That in general, then, should be found upon the surface of England, map constructions which more or less roughly represent the whole of England, – all this has nothing puzzling about it. Any ordinary map of England spread out upon English ground would illustrate, in a way, such possession, by a part of the surface of England, of a resemblance to the whole. But now suppose that this our resemblance is to be made absolutely exact, in the sense previously defined. A map of England, contained within England, is to represent, down to the minutest detail, every contour and marking, natural or artificial, that occurs upon the surface of England. At once our imaginary case involves a new problem. This is now no longer the general problem of map making, but the nature of the internal meaning of our new purpose.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.artic.edu\/iiif\/2\/\/02c4dd2b-f606-a372-9131-f1dc65a4a4d8\/full\/843,\/0\/default.jpg\")
<\/span>From the very outset of the philosophical study of the diversities of the universe, it has been noticed, that in many cases, where common sense is content to enumerate two, or three, or some other limited number of aspects or constituents of a supposed object, closer analysis shows that the variety contained in this object, if really existent at all, must be boundless, so that the dilemma: \u00abEither no true variety of the supposed type is real, or else this variety involves an infinity of aspects,\u00bb has often been used as a critical test, to discredit some commonly received view as to the unity and variety of the universe or of some supposed portion thereof. Mr. Bradley has not been wanting in his appeal to this type of critical argument. But to give this argument its due weight, when it comes as a device for discrediting all efforts to define the nature of Individuals, requires one to attack the whole question of the actual Infinite, a question that recent discussions of the Philosophy of Mathematics have set in a good argumentative essay<\/a> decidedly new light, but that these discussions have also made more technical than ever. If I am to be just to this matter, I must therefore needs wander far afield. Nobody, I fear, except a decidedly technical reader, will care to follow. I have, therefore, hesitated long before venturing seriously to entertain the plan of saying, either here or elsewhere, anything about what seems to me the true, and, as I believe, the highly positive implication, of Mr. Bradley\u2019s apparently most destructive arguments concerning Individual Being and concerning the meaning of the world of Appearance.<\/p>\n