“But how the relation can stand to the qualities is, on the other side, unintelligible. If it is nothing to the qualities, then they are not related at all; and, if so, as we saw, they have ceased to be qualities, and their relation is a nonentity. But if it is to be something to them, then clearly we shall require a _new_-connecting relation. For the relation hardly can be the mere adjective of one or both of its terms; or, at least, as such it seems indefensible. And, being something itself, if it does not itself bear a relation to the terms, in what intelligible way will it succeed in being anything to them? But here again we are hurried off into the eddy of a hopeless process, since we are forced to go on finding new relations without end. The links are united by a link, and this bond of union is a link which also has two ends; and these require each a fresh link to connect them with the old. The problem is to find how the relation can stand to its qualities, and this problem is insoluble.” I cannot deal adequately with this argument without abstruse technicalities which would be out of place. I will, however, point out what seems to me the essential error. Bradley conceives a relation as something just as substantial as its terms, and not radically different in kind. The analogy of the chain with links should make us suspicious, since it clearly proves, if it is valid, that chains are impossible, and yet, as a fact, they exist. There is not a word in his argument which would not apply to physical chains. The successive links are united not by another link, but by a spatial relation. I think Bradley has been misled, unconsciously, by a circumstance to which I alluded in an earlier chapter, namely, the fact that the _word_ for a relation is as substantial as the _words_ for its terms. Suppose A and B are two events, and A precedes B. In the proposition “A precedes B”, the word “precedes” is just as substantial as the words “A” and “B”. The relation of the _two_ events A and B is represented, in language, by the time or space order of the _three_ words “A”, “precedes”, and “B”. But this order is an actual relation, not a word for relation. The first step in Bradley’s regress does actually have to be taken in giving verbal expression to a relation, and the word for a relation does have to be related to the words for its terms. But this is a linguistic, not a metaphysical, fact, and the regress does not have to go any further. It should be added that, as Bradley himself recognises, his difficulties break out afresh when he comes to consider the relation of subject and predicate when a character is assigned to Reality, and that he is therefore compelled to conclude that _no_ truth is quite true. A conclusion of this sort, based upon an extremely abstract argument, makes it natural to suspect that there is some error in the argument.