How, then, might the interpretation of the world as a system of qualities in relation be defended against Mr. Bradley’s powerful formulation of the mystic’s objection, and what is the worth of the defence? Two possible lines of argument suggest themselves as sufficiently plausible to call for examination. (1) The edge of the objection would be turned, as far as it rests upon the unsatisfactoriness of the indefinite regress, if we could regard _all_ relations as “external,” that is, as making no difference in the qualities they relate. Now, some relations, it has been asserted, are merely external, _e.g._, relations of position and again of _sense_ in the geometrical meaning of the word (like the difference between a right-hand and a left-hand glove). Why, then, may this not ultimately be the case with all relations? But if all relations are external, we can no longer argue that the related terms must contain a further relation between themselves as the basis and themselves as the result of the first relation, and so the whole anti-relational case falls to the ground. Such a view seems, however, to suffer from fatal deficiencies. For (_a_) it is at least hard to see how any relation can be ultimately external to its terms. For you cannot hold two terms in a relation of any sort without discriminating them; until they are at least discriminated as two they cannot be terms with a relation between them. Thus discrimination, and therefore the relation of distinction, is fundamental in all relation. But where we can distinguish there must already be in the discriminated terms some difference to afford a basis for discrimination. Only what is already different can be distinguished. And with this admission the door is once more opened for the indefinite regress. (_b_) And even if this were not so, it seems unthinkable that _all_ relations should be in the end external to their terms. If no relation in the end makes any difference to its terms, and thus has no foundation in their nature, it becomes a standing miracle how or why the terms should enter into relations to which they are all the time absolutely indifferent. The logical consequence of such a view would surely be the dismissal of all relations as pure illusion, and the reduction of real existence to a chaos of disconnected reals which we by some inexplicable intellectual perversity persist in taking for a system. The now universally recognised failure of Herbart’s attempt to work out a theory of Realism on these lines seems ominous for the success of any future doctrine of the same kind.