On the one hand there is a systematic discrediting of the ultimate claims of the knowledge function, and this not from external physiological or psychological reasons such as are sometimes alleged against its capacity, but on the basis of its own interior logic. But on the other hand, a strictly logical criterion is deliberately adopted and employed as the fundamental and final criterion for the philosophic conception of reality. Long familiarity has not dulled my astonishment at finding exactly the same set of considerations which in the earlier portion of the book are employed to condemn things as experienced by us to the region of Appearance, employed in the latter portion of the book to afford a triumphant demonstration of the existence and character of Absolute Reality. The argument I take up first on its formal side, and then with reference to material considerations.[21]
The positive conception of Reality is reached by the conception that “ultimate reality must be such that it does not contradict itself; here is an absolute criterion. And it is proved absolute by the fact that either in endeavoring to deny it or even in attempting to doubt it, we tacitly assume its validity” (_ibid._, pp. 136-137). That is to say, when one sets out to think one must avoid self-contradiction; this avoidance, or, put positively, the attainment of consistency, harmony, is the basic law of all thinking. Since in thinking we set out to attain reality, it follows that reality itself must be self-consistent, and that its self-consistency determines the law of thought. Or, as Mr. Bradley again puts the matter, “In order to think at all you must subject yourself to the standard, a standard which implies an absolute knowledge of reality; and while you doubt this, you accept it, and obey, while you rebel” (_ibid._, p. 153). The absolute knowledge referred to is, of course, the knowledge of the thoroughly self-consistent, non-contradictory character of reality. Every reader of Mr. Bradley’s book knows how he goes on from this point to supply positive content to reality; to give an outline sketch of the characters it must possess and the way in which it must possess them in order to maintain its thoroughly self-consistent character. It is, however, only the strictly formal aspect of the matter that I am here concerned with.