THE INTELLECTUALIST CRITERION 113 



equally sustained contention that the philosophic 

 conception of reality must be based on an exclu 

 sively intellectual criterion, a criterion belonging 

 to and confined to theory, we have a situation that 

 is thought-provoking. The situation grows in in 

 terest when it is remembered that there is a general 

 and growing tendency among those who appeal in 

 philosophy to a strictly intellectualistic method of 

 defining &quot; reality,&quot; to insist that the reality reached 

 by this method has a super-intellectual content: 

 that intellectual, affectional, and volitional fea 

 tures are all joined and fused in &quot; ultimate &quot; real 

 ity. The curious character of the situation is that 

 Reality is an &quot; absolute experience &quot; of which the 

 intellectual is simply one partial and transmuted 

 moment. Yet this reality is attained unto, in philo 

 sophic method, by exclusive emphasis upon the in 

 tellectual aspect of present experience and by sys 

 tematic exclusion of exactly the emotional, volitional 

 features which with respect to content are insisted 

 upon ! Under such circumstances the cynically- 

 minded are moved to wonder whether this tremen 

 dous insistence upon one factor in present ex 

 perience at the expense of others, is not because 

 this is the only way to maintain the notion of 

 &quot; Absolute Experience,&quot; and to prevent it from col 

 lapsing into ordinary every-day experience. This 

 paradox is not peculiar to Mr. Bradley. Looking 

 at the Neo-Kantian movement in the broad in its 



