Note 47 — V

The difficulty, of course, is not a merely formal one, much less a verbal one. Instinctively we grant to Bosanquet his statement that reality is a continuous whole; we feel it almost captious to question his right to it. But why? Because the content of judgment is continuous; judgment is always engaged with the determination of a related totality. But if all content is ideal, and judgment is just the application of this content to reality in virtue of an isolated contact, surely it begs the entire question to say that reality apart from the content applied is continuous, and then to use this assertion to justify the objective validity of the judgment—its element of permanent truth.