say "Time is real" they often, at least, mean something _more_ than
merely that there _is_ such a thing as Time, something therefore, which
may be denied, without denying this. All the same, there is, I think, a
real difficulty in seeing that they ever _do_ mean anything more, and,
_if_ they do, what more it is that they can mean.
The two expressions "There _is_ such a thing as so and so" and "So
and so is real" are certainly sometimes and quite naturally used as
equivalents, even if they are not always so used. And Mr. Bradley's own
language implies that this is so. For, as we have seen, in the first
passage, he seems to identify belonging to reality with being real.
The conclusion which he expresses in one place by saying that Time
does not belong to reality he expresses in another by saying that it
is not real; whereas in the second passage he seems to identify the
meaning of the same phrase "belonging to reality" with _existing;_
he says that whatever exists must belong to reality, and that it is
self-contradictory to deny this. But if both being real and existing
are identical with belonging to reality, it would seem they must be
identical with one another. And, indeed, in another passage in the
Appendix to the 2nd Edition (p. 555) we find Mr. Bradley actually using
the following words: "Anything," he says, "that in any sense _is,_
qualifies the absolute reality and so is real." Moreover, as we have
seen, he declares it to be nonsense to deny that Time _is_; he must,
therefore, allow that, _in a sense,_ at all events, it is nonsense to
deny that Time is real. And yet this denial is the very one he has
made. Mr. Bradley, therefore, does seem himself to allow that the word
"real" may, _sometimes_ at all events, be properly used as equivalent
to the words "exists," "is a fact," "is." And yet his two assertions
cannot both be true, unless there is _some_ sense in which the whole
proposition "Time is real" is _not_ equivalent to and cannot be
inferred from "Time is," or "Time exists," or "Time is a fact."
It seems, then, pretty clear that Mr. Bradley must be holding that the
statement "Time is real" is in _one_ sense, _not_ equivalent to "Time
exists"; though he admits that, in _another_ sense, it is. And I will
only quote one other passage which seems to make this plain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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