7 - The Validity of Inference

Summary

In Book III, Part II, Chapter III, 560 weary pages into the Principles of Logic, Bradley confronts his readers with the question “Is inference valid?” On the basis of the arguments in the final two chapters of the Principles of Logic, he concludes that it is not and delivers his answer with words that gained his inclusion in The Oxford Book of English Prose (Quiller-Couch 1925, 911–13):

Unless thought stands for something that falls beyond mere intelligence, if “thinking” is not used with some strange implication that never was part of the meaning of the word, a lingering scruple still forbids us to believe that reality can ever be purely rational. It may come from a failure in my metaphysics, or from a weakness of the flesh which continues to blind me, but the notion that existence could be the same as understanding strikes as cold and ghost-like as the dreariest materialism. That the glory of this world in the end is appearance leaves the world more glorious, if we feel it is a show of some fuller splendour; but the sensuous curtain is a deception and a cheat, if it hides some colourless movement of atoms, some spectral woof of impalpable abstractions, or unearthly ballet of bloodless categories. Though dragged to such conclusions, we can not embrace them. Our principles may be true, but they are not reality. They no more make that Whole which commands our devotion, than some shredded dissection of human tatters is that warm and breathing beauty of flesh which our hearts found delightful.

(PL 590–1)