Includes here anything which contains an undistinguished

diversity, any totality of aspects which is not broken

up--the diversities qualify that whole, and are felt as

making it what it is. Are these diversities to be called

qualities (p. 27)? It is really perhaps a verbal

question. Anything that is somewhat at all may be said

to be or to have a quality. But on the other hand we may

prefer to use quality specially of those diversities

which are developed when wholes are analyzed into terms

and relations. And, when we ask if there can be

qualities without relations, this distinction becomes

important. The question must be answered affirmatively

if we call by the name of quality the diverse aspects of

feeling. But on the other hand such diverse aspects

cannot exist independently. They are not given except as

contained in and as qualifying some whole, and their

independence consists merely in our vicious abstraction.

Nor when we pass to the relational stage does diversity

cease to be the inseparable adjective of unity. For the

relations themselves cannot exist except within and as

the adjectives of an underlying unity. The whole that is

analyzed into relations and terms can fall into the

background and be obscured, but it can never be

dissipated. And, if it were dissipated, then with it

both terms and relations would perish. For there is no

absolute "between" or "together," nor can "between" and

"together" be the mere adjectives of self-existent

units. Qualities in the end can have no meaning except

as contained in and as dependent on some whole, and

whether that whole is relational or otherwise makes no

difference in this respect.

And it is not hard, perhaps, at this point to dispose

of a fallacy which seems somewhat common. You may take,

it is said, some terms, A, B, and C, and may place them

in various relations, X, Y, and Z, and through all they

remain still A, B, and C. And this, it is urged, proves

that A, B, and C exist, or may exist, free from all

relations or at least independently. My character, for

example, may be compared with that of another man, or,

having first lived to the north of him, I may then

change to the south; and to neither of us need it make a

difference, and therefore we both are unaffected and so

independent. But an answer to this fallacy seems even

obvious. What is proved is that a certain character may,

as such and in respect of that character, exist

indifferently in various relations. But what is not

proved at all is that this character could exist

independent and naked. And since the argument starts by

presupposing without any enquiry the independent

existence of the character and indeed rests throughout

on that presupposed existence, it could in no

case arrive, it seems to me, at the desired conclusion.

The most that it could show would be that some relations

are external and may make no difference to their terms.

But to argue from this that all the relations are or

even may be external, and that some qualities either do

or may exist independently, seems quite illogical. Such

an argument obviously could at once be met by a

distinction drawn between different kinds of relations.

(iii) For myself I neither make nor accept such a

distinction except as relative and subordinate. I do not

admit that any relation whatever can be merely external

and make no difference to its terms, and I will now

proceed to discuss this important point. I will begin by

first dismissing a difficult question. Qualities exist,

we have seen, improperly as diverse aspects of felt

wholes, and then again properly as terms which are

distinguished and related. But how far are we to say

that such characters as those e.g. of different colours

are made by distinction, and were not of the same

quality at all when mere aspects of the un-analyzed? To

this question I will not attempt a reply, because I am

sure that I should not do it justice. I have great

sympathy with the view that such characters are so

developed as to be in a sense constituted by

distinction, but I cannot defend this view or identify

myself with it. And for myself, and for argument's sake

at least, I shall admit that a quality in feeling may

already have the character, A or B, which we find when

afterwards quality proper is made by distinction. In no

case (to repeat) will there be a quality existing