Recent Tendencies in Ethics / Three Lectures to Clergy Given at Cambridge

by W. R. Sorley

Mr Bradley's Absolute, we may say, has two faces, one of which is described as good, while the other is inscrutable. "Obviously," he says, "the good is not the Whole, and the Whole, as such, is not good. And, viewed thus in relation to the Absolute, there is nothing either bad or good, there is not anything better or worse. For the Absolute is not its appearances." This is the inscrutable side. But yet "the Absolute appears in its phenomena and is real nowhere outside them;… it is all of them in unity. And so, regarded from this other side, the Absolute is good, and it manifests itself throughout in various degrees of goodness and badness."[1] What would be contradiction in another writer is only two-sidedness in Mr Bradley. And it is this second side which interests us, for here "the Absolute is good," and yet, good as it is, manifests itself in badness as well as goodness, and that in various degrees. If we are to follow another statement of the doctrine, however, we shall have to allow 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 evil apply as between these parts?

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality-Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]

We may speak of parts as higher or lower; and Mr Bradley defines the "lower" as "that which, to be made complete, would have to undergo a more total transformation of its nature."[1] The meaning of this is not clear. The reference may be to the complete state which a thing may reach in process of growth. Thus an early stage of a rose-bud may be said to be "lower" than its later stage because it requires a greater transformation before it produces the bloom. But here 'lower' does not mean ethically lower, unless immaturity be confused with evil. Or the complete state may be regarded as the type of some order or class, from which different individuals differ in greater or less degree. This meaning is not suggested by the author; and it could have ethical implication only if the type had been first of all shown to have an ethical value. Or again, the completeness referred to may be that which is alone complete in the strict sense of the word, namely, the universe. And we might say that a rose-leaf would require greater transformation in order to become complete in this sense than a rose-bush, or that the act of giving a cup of cold water was less complete than the far-reaching activity say of the first Napoleon. But this difference in completeness would not entail a corresponding difference in moral worth or goodness.

[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]

Where all stages are essential, it is not possible to say that one is good and another evil. Is not the good something that ought to be striven for, attained, and preserved? and is not evil something that ought not to be at all? And how can we say that any part ought not to be when every part is essential?