low that the "badness" is also good, and that the
"various degrees" are all equal. For "the Absolute is perfect in all its
detail, it is equally true and good throughout."[2] Whether or not the
good is contradictory, as Mr Bradley maintains,[3] we must allow that he
succeeds in making his account of it contradictory.

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 411.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 401.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 409.]

I will try to put the gist of the matter in my own words. Mr Bradley's
Absolute is eternal, relationless, ineffable. To it goodness cannot be
ascribed; indeed no predicate can be properly applied to it, for any
predication implies relation: in earlier language than Mr Bradley's it
involves determination and therefore negation. Even to say that the
Absolute appears or manifests itself is to predicate something, to
imply relation, and thus is an offence against the absoluteness of the
Absolute. But nevertheless there _is_ a world of phenomena, which the
most mystical of philosophers must recognise, if only as a world
of illusion. The sum-total of these phenomena may be called the
appearances of the Absolute; and the Absolute, according to Mr
Bradley, "is real nowhere outside them." In this sense of reality we
may make predicates about it. Indeed all our predicates, Mr Bradley
teaches in his 'Logic,' have reality--the universe of reality--for
their ultimate subject.

In this sense it may be possible to speak of reality as good (though
it is a misapplication of the term "Absolute" to call it good). But
the question remains what we mean by "good" in this connexion, and
what justification we have for using the predicate. And the answer
must be that Mr Bradley means very little, since the goodness is
manifested "in various degrees of goodness and badness," and that the
justification for using the term is not made clear. It seems to
be used of reality in a somewhat vague sense, as it were _jure
dignitatis_ and to have as little ethical significance as "right
honourable" when applied to a politician or "reverend" to a clergyman:
cases in which it might be consistent to say that right honourable
gentlemen manifest various degrees of honour and dishonour, or that
reverend gentlemen are worthy of various degrees of reverence and the
opposite. All the details of the phenomenal world are bound together
by chains of necessity; each is an essential part of the sum-total.[1]
How can the distinction of good and e