[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.]

are altered; for the relations, it is said, are but external.  But I reply that, if so, I cannot understand the leaving by the terms of one set of relations and their adoption of another fresh set.  The process and its result to the terms, if they contribute nothing to it [surely they contribute to it all there is ‘of’ it!] seem irrational throughout. [If ‘irrational’ here means simply ‘non-rational,’ or non-deducible from the essence of either term singly, it is no reproach; if it means ‘contradicting’ such essence, Mr. Bradley should show wherein and how.] But, if they contribute anything, they must surely be affected internally. [Why so, if they contribute only their surface?  In such relations as ‘on,’ ‘a foot away,’ ‘between,’ ‘next,’ etc., only surfaces are in question.]