of the Concept of Relation.

Since the preceding chapter was written, I have had the opportunity of studying Dr. Stout’s paper in the current volume of Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. I have not thought it necessary to make any alterations in the text of Chapter 4, in consequence of Dr. Stout’s criticism, but I may perhaps be permitted to add the following remarks, which must not be regarded as a systematic appreciation or examination of Dr. Stout’s views. The latter, as he himself pleads, cannot indeed be finally judged until he has worked out the theory of Predication for which his present paper merely prepares the way.

1. Dr. Stout begins by admitting what to my own mind is the essence of the anti-relational argument. “No relation or system of relations can ever constitute a self-subsistent and self-contained Reality. The all-inclusive universe cannot ultimately consist in (? of) a collection of interrelated terms” (op. cit., p. 2). This being once conceded, I should have thought it an inevitable consequence that a “collection of interrelated terms” cannot give us the final truth about the nature of anything. For the whole idealist contention, as I understand it and have tried to sustain it in the present work, is that the structure of the whole is so repeated in any and every one of its members that what is not the truth about the whole is never the ultimate truth about anything. precisely because there is ultimately nothing apart from the whole, and the whole again is nothing apart from its members. So much, I had thought, we have all learned from Hegel, and therefore Dr. Stout’s dilemma that any proposition asserting relation (p. 5) must be false, unless the relational scheme, so long as it is not affirmed of the ultimate whole itself, gives us truth, does not seem to me to possess any real cogency. With Mr. Bradley himself, as quoted by Dr. Stout, I should urge that if the relational scheme is not itself internally discrepant, there remains no valid ground for disputing its applicability to the whole.

2. Dr. Stout’s introduction into a “relational unity” of the third term,—relatedness does not seem to me to remove the difficulties inherent in our problem. And the illustration by which he supports it appears to be unsound. He argues that when my hat is on my head this state of things implies (1) the two related terms, the hat and the head,(2) a relation of on and under. (3) the fact that the terms stand in this relation—their relatedness. For (1) and (2) by themselves would be compatible with my hat being on the peg and my head bare. But surely there is here a confusion between the relation of above and below, and the very different relation of on and under. The latter relation includes, as the former does not, immediate contact as part of its meaning. If there are (1) a hat and a head, and (2) the relation on and under—in this sense—between the two, there is surely no need of a third factor to complete the concrete actuality of “hat on head.” If the hat is not actually on the head, then (2), the supposed relation, is not there at all. And if (2) is there the whole fact is already there. In a word, Dr. Stout seems to me to count in the concrete fact of “thing exhibiting related aspects” as a third constituent in itself, precisely as popular Logic sometimes counts in the actual judgment, under the name of Copula, as one factor of itself.[[98]]

Then to Dr. Stout’s use of his distinction between the relation and the fact of relatedness, I think it may be replied that it leaves us precisely where we were before. The hat is qualified by being on the head, the head by being in or under the hat, and hat and head together by the relation of on and under between them. But how these various aspects of the fact are to be combined in a single consistent view we are no nearer knowing.

3. The endless regress. I think it will be seen from the preceding chapter that in my own view a genuine endless regress is evidence of the falsity of the conception which gives rise to it, and that I hold this on the ground that the endless regress always presupposes the self-contradictory purpose to sum an admittedly infinite series. Hence I could not concur, so far as I can see at present, in Dr. Stout’s distinction between the endless regress which does and that which does not involve self-contradiction. As to his illustration of endless regress of the second kind, the infinite divisibility of space (p. 11), I should have thought that there is no actual endless regress in question until you substitute for infinite divisibility infinite actual subdivision, and that when you make this substitution it commits you at once to the self-contradictory completion of an unending task. (Cf. what was said above, § 10, with reference to infinite numerical series.)

4. Dr. Stout goes on to deny that there is any endless regress, self-contradictory or not, involved in the relational scheme. According to him, what connects the relation with its terms is not another relation (which would of course give rise to an endless regress), but their relatedness, which is “a common adjective both of the relation and the terms” (p. 11). I have already explained why this solution appears to me merely to repeat the problem. The relatedness, so far as I can see, is a name for the concrete fact with its double aspect of quality and relation, and I cannot understand how mere insistence upon the concrete unity of the fact makes the conjunction of its aspects more intelligible.

5. Dr. Stout further supports his contention by a theory of the nature of continuous connection which I have perhaps failed to understand. Replying in anticipation to the possible objection of an opponent, that if the “relatedness” connects the terms with their relation there must be a second link to connect the term with its relatedness, he says “there is no intermediate link and there is need for none. For the connection is continuous, and has its ground in that ultimate continuity which is presupposed by all relational unity” (p. 12, cf. pp. 2-4). And, as he has previously told us, “so far as there is continuous connection there is nothing between [i.e. between the connected terms], and there is therefore no relation.”

Now there seems to me to be a contradiction latent here. Continuous connection, of course, implies distinct but connected terms which form a series. Where there are no such distinct terms there is nothing to connect. Now it is, as I understand it, part of the very nature of a continuous series that any two terms of the series have always a number of possible intermediate terms between them. And therefore, in a continuous series, there are no immediately adjacent terms. Dr. Stout’s own illustration brings this out—

β α a b
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