Note 2 — VI.

The worth assigned in this chapter to the contradictions of experience involves a standpoint which apparently is at variance with that of Mr. F.H. Bradley, whose book, Appearance and Reality, has occupied such an important place in the philosophical study and controversy of the last ten years. Of course, here is not the place for final criticism of Mr. Bradley, since the present examination of doubt is no such scrutiny of experience as his; it is far short of what would make a complete philosophical argument. Nevertheless, a word or two expressing the nature of the difference between his view and the view advocated here can hardly be impertinent. Thus, if I read him rightly, Mr. Bradley has argued from the paradoxes of experience to the complete, hopeless phenomenality of experience, while in this study of doubt the argument has been from the paradoxes of experience to a thoroughly realistic experience. Again, Mr. Bradley's Absolute is able to include the phenomenal, the relative and contradictory, only because this is so unsubstantial as to offer no resistance, while here there has not even been any question of inclusion. All experience, our position has been, is informed with reality; its very contradictions hold an otherwise phenomenal, relative, changing experience close down to a real world; and this position, I repeat, is at variance with what Mr. Bradley has seemed to say. See, however, a short article, "Relativity and Reality," in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. I, No. 24, November, 1904.