 It is often claimed that Bradley’s eliminativism may be addressed by positing a special category of entities, either (1) facts (Hochberg 1978: 338–40; Armstrong 1989: 109–110, 1997: 118–9; Hossack 2007: 41–5) or (2) tropes (Maurin 2010: 321–3; Simons 2010: 201–3). The strategic idea they share is that we can embrace the second horn of Bradley’s dilemma without being stymied by his regress argument. Bradley assumed external relations to be general entities, i.e., universals, capable of relating different things from whatever things they happen to actually relate. It follows from this assumption that the mere existence of \(R\) and the things it relates cannot suffice for \(R\) to relate them, because \(R\) might have been engaged elsewhere relating other things, and this problem will persist however many subsidiary (universal) \(R\)s we introduce. But, it is argued, this problem can be avoided by either positing facts or tropes, which are particular rather than general entities. Both of these purported solutions are open to question. It seems that they presuppose what they set out to show: the capacity of relations to relate (MacBride 2011: 168–72). Why is this?