[Footnote 1: Once more, don't slip from logical into physical situations. Of course, if the table be wet, it will moisten the book, or if it be slight enough and the book heavy enough, the book will break it down. But such collateral phenomena are not the point at issue. The point is whether the successive relations 'on' and 'not-on' can rationally (not physically) hold of the same constant terms, abstractly taken. Professor A.E. Taylor drops from logical into material considerations when he instances color-contrast as a proof that _A_, 'as contra-distinguished from _B_, is not the same thing as mere _A_ not in any way affected' (_Elements of Metaphysics_, 1903, p. 145). Note the substitution, for 'related,' of the word 'affected,' which begs the whole question.] seem possible and even existing.... That you do not alter what you compare or rearrange in space seems to common sense quite obvious, and that on the other side there are as obvious difficulties does not occur to common sense at all. And I will begin by pointing out these difficulties.... There is a relation in the result, and this relation, we hear, is to make no difference in its terms. But, if so, to what does it make a difference? [_doesn't it make a difference to us onlookers, at least?_] and what is the meaning and sense of qualifying the terms by it? [_Surely the meaning is to tell the truth about their relative position_.[1]] If, in short, it is external to the terms, how can it possibly be true _of_ them? [_Is it the 'intimacy' suggested by the little word 'of,' here, which I have underscored, that is the root of Mr. Bradley's trouble?_].... If the terms from their inner nature do not enter into the relation, then, so far as they are concerned, they seem related for no reason at all.... Things are spatially related, first in one way, and then become related in another way, and yet in no way themselves [Footnote 1: But 'is there any sense,' asks Mr. Bradley, peevishly, on p. 579, 'and if so, what sense, in truth that is only outside and "about" things?' Surely such a question may be left unanswered.]