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Mind Association

Mr. Bradley on Immediate ResemblanceAuthor(s): William JamesSource: Mind, New Series, Vol. 2, No. 6 (Apr., 1893), pp. 208-210Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2247958Accessed: 19/01/2009 09:47

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V.-DISCUSSIONS.MR. BRADLEY ON IMMEDIATE RESEMBLANCE.

My agreement with Mr. Bradley that " the issue involved isone of very great and wide-reaching importance" must be myexcuse for sending a word of comment on his paper in theJanuary MIND. The text of his criticism is furnished by pp.490-4, and 532-3 of vol. i. of my work The Prinoiples of Psy-chology, and the exact question is this: Is the 'resemblance'which we predicate of two objects due in the last resort alwaysto the operations on our mind of qualitatively identical elementscontained in each? Or, may we, on the other hand, admit theexistence, amongst our mind's objects, of qualities or natureswhich have no definite ' point' in common, but which we perceiveto be, although numerically distinct, yet like each other in variousdegrees andways ? We so often discover later the exact point ofresemblance in two composite objects which first struck us bytheir likeness as vague wholes, and we are so often able to nameit as an identical portion in both, that the temptation togeneralise lies very near; and we then say that there cannowhere be natures immediately like or unlike each other, andthat every case of so-called similarity, even the simplest, mustconstitute a problem in analysis, which a higher discernmentmight solve. But since the higher discernment., methodicallyabandoned to this analytic quest, ought not to stop at anyelements of which resemblance is simply affirmed(for the 'point'of this resemblance must then also be sought), it is obvious thatthe problem can only lead to one of two conclusions, either to(1) The postulation of point after point, encapsulated withineach other in infinitum, as the constitutive condition of theresemblance of any two objects; or to(2) A last kind of element (if one could then say 'kind') ofwhose self-compoundings all the objects, and of whose diverse,numbers in the objects, all the likeness and unlikeness in theworld are made.Of these two views of resemblance the formerleads to a sortof Leibnitzian metaphysics, and the latter to what I call theMind-dust theory.My solution, or rather Stumpf's (for in my book I am but thehumble follower of the eminent Munich psychologist), was to takeneither of these objectionable alternatives, but (challenging thehasty hypothesis that composition must explain all) to admit(3) That the last elements of things may differvariously, andthat their 'kinds' and bare unmediated resemblances and con-trasts may be ultimate data of our world as well as provisionalcategories of our perception.

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MR. BRADLEY ON IMMEDIATE RESEMBLANCE. 209Mr. Bradley is dissatisfied both with this thesis,' and with thearguments given in my book to support it. I care much more

about the thesis than about the arguments, so I will spare thereader all cavil at my critic's treatment of the latter. In parti-cular I abandon the series-business to his mercy, as beingsomething inessential, for I am much more concerned withfurthering understanding of the subject than with defendingmy own text.2 As regards the thesis itself, Mr. f3radleyquarrels greatly with the simplicity of the elements betweenwhich in the last resort it contends that bare unmediatedresemblance may obtain. I did, it is true, assume in my'textthat the elements were simple, and I called them simplequalities, but I regard that as an entirely inessential point. Sofar as my thesis stands up for ultimate unmediated likeness asagainst likeness dependenton partially identical content, it makesno difference whether the last elements assumed to be like, aresimple or complex. They must only not contain any identicalpoint. In other words, complexes like abc and def might re-semble each other by principle (3) as well as simple elements likea and b.This clears up one confusion. But dire confusion still remainsin my mind as to the rest of what Mr. Bradley may mean. Hehas a solution of his own which is like neither (1), (2), nor (3) aspropoundedabove. He alludes to it abundantly, but dispenseshimself from stating it articulately, or illustrating it by anyexample, because it proceeds from a principlewhich he imaginesto be 'the common property of philosophic students'. Suchoracularexpression of opinion might fairly exempt one from theduty of nearerresearch, but the great debt I owe to Mr. Bradley'sLogic makes me struggle in the hope of yet finding valuabletruth.Mr. Bradley appears to hold that all likeness must be ' in andthrough a particular point'-at least he says so on page 85.Now call the 'point' m, and the two like objects a and b. Ifthe m in a were simply like the mnn b, that would be that simpleresemblance over again with which Mr. Bradley is not content.But if we suppose the two m's to be alike by virtue of another'point,' finer still, that leads to infinite regress; and that againI understand Mr. Bradley not to favour. It then would remainopen to say that the two m's in a and b are identical in nature

'Or have I made a gross blunder,and is he dissatisfiedreally not with'simple resemblance' but only with ' resemblance between simples,' onwhich, as I presently explain, I do not insist?

2 One misapprehension, however, I may complain of. Mr. Bradleyseems to accuse me of believing that the 'points of resemblance' whichform the ground of similarity must be 'separable' parts of the similarthings. Discernible arts are all that the argumentrequires; and I surelynever implied that the 'points' in question must be susceptible ofphysical isolation. The accusation is so absurd that I fear I have notunderstood Mr. Bradley's text. 14

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210 W. JAMES: IMMEDIATE RESEMBL.ANCE.and only numerically distinct. But here again pure identitydispleases Mr. Bradley, whose great principle is that " our onechance lies in maintaining the vital, the inseparableconnexion atevery point between identity and difference'" (bottom of p. 88).Just how this principle works in the matter in question, Mr.Bradley does not divulge, and I wish that, instead of his pleasantirony about my familiarity with the dialectical method, he hadhimself given some exacter' account. I have laboured with thegreatest good-will to reconstruct his thought, but feel wholly atsea with my results. If he means simply the Hegelian common-place that whereas neither the abstract sameness nor the abstractotherness of two objects can constitute likeness between them,the likeness must seek in the ' synthesis' of the sameness withthe otherness its only possible mode of realisation, that seems tome but an excessively clumsy way of stating in terms of a quasi-miracle the very truth which Stumpf and I express by sayingthat likeness is an immediately ascertained relation. You can-not for ever analytically exhibit its ground,but must somewhereat last postulate it as there, as having already effected itself, youknow not how. Nothing is gained for our understanding by pre-senting the process as a sort of juggler's trick, that, namely, ofthe seeminglyimpossible coalescence, of two contradictoryterms;and therefore I cannot believe that the subtle Mr. Bradley hasanything as innocent as that in his mind. Perhaps what I writemay draw him fromhis reserve!Of course there is a familiarpath open to those who believe thatlikeness must be 'in and through a particular point,' and whoyet deny that the 'point' can be in two objects the same. Theycan call likeness an 'Antinomy '; saying that all likeness ofwholes is conditioned on that of their metaphysical parts, andthat unconditionally like parts are unattainable, however longone may seek. But this leaves both immediate' likeness andapparent identity as ever-recurringcategories in our thinking,never to be expelled from our empiricalworld, and I submit thatMr. Bradley has not yet shown these categories to be absurd.'Antinomies' should surely not be multiplied beyond necessity.The qualities of the things of this world, the ' terms' betweenwhich likenesses and differences obtain, are not supposed to beengenderedby the summation of a procession of still moreinwardqualities involvedwithin each other in infinite regression, like thewhirls of an endlessly converging spiral that never reaches its

central point. Why need we insist that the ' relations' betweenthe terms, the likenesses and differences themselves, must beengendered by such an impossible summation or synthesis ?How quality logically makes itself, we do not know; and weknow no more in the case of the quality of a relation of likeness,than in that of the quality of a sensational content.WILLIAM JAMES.