as 'the same.' Returning into the
stream of sensible presentation, nouns and adjectives, and _thats_ and
abstract _whats_, grow confluent again, and the word 'is' names
all these experiences of conjunction. Mr. Bradley understands the
isolation of the abstracts, but to understand the combination is to
him impossible.[1] 'To understand a complex _AB_,' he

[Footnote 1: So far as I catch his state of mind, it is somewhat like
this: 'Book,' 'table,' 'on'--how does the existence of these three
abstract elements result in _this_ book being livingly on _this_
table? Why isn't the table on the book? Or why doesn't the 'on'
connect itself with another book, or something that is not a table?
Mustn't something _in_ each of the three elements already determine
the two others to _it_, so that they do not settle elsewhere or float
vaguely? Mustn't the whole fact be _prefigured in each part_, and
exist _de jure_ before it can exist _de facto_? But, if so, in what
can the jural existence consist, if not in a spiritual miniature of
the whole fact's constitution actuating; every partial factor as its
purpose? But is this anything but the old metaphysical fallacy of
looking behind a fact _in esse_ for the ground of the fact, and
finding it in the shape of the very same fact _in posse_? Somewhere we
must leave off with a _constitution_ behind which there is nothing.]

says, 'I must begin with _A_ or _B_. And beginning, say with _A_, if
I then merely find _B_, I have either lost _A_, or I have got beside
_A_, [_the word 'beside' seems here vital, as meaning a conjunction
'external' and therefore unintelligible_] something else, and in
neither case have I understood.[1] For my intellect cannot simply
unite a diversity, nor has it in itself any form or way of
togetherness, and you gain nothing if, beside _A_ and _B_, you offer
me their conjunction in fact. For to my intellect that is no more
than another external element. And "facts," once for all, are for my
intellect not true unless they satisfy it.... The intellect has in its
nature no principle of mere togetherness' (pp. 570, 572).

Of course Mr. Bradley has a right to define 'intellect' as the power
by which we perceive separations but not unions--provided he give
due notice to the reader. But why then claim that such a maimed and
amputated power must reign supreme in philosophy, and accuse on its
behoof the whole empirical world of irrationality? It is true that he
elsewhere (p. 568