434 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



ness and as to where its supreme existence is to be 

 found. 



That these aspects of Eeality, these different meanings 

 of the word " real," constitute the central and everlasting 

 problem of philosophic thought, can be gathered, inter 

 alia, from the fact that the oldest among the great 

 systems of philosophy that have influenced speculation 

 ever since, that of Plato, had already coined simple terms 

 wherewith to express these meanings, and that they 

 form the subject of elaborate discussion in the latest 

 prominent metaphysical treatise published in this 

 country Mr Bradley's ' Appearance and Eeality.' Thus, 

 however often metaphysical discussions have been de- 

 nounced as aimless and futile, the problem of reality has 

 survived all vicissitudes of opinion ; and its questions : 

 What is Eeality ? What is the truly Eeal ? will occupy 

 the human mind, again and again, as long as it is capable 

 of elevated thought. 1 



1 The earliest discussion of the 

 problem of reality in its threefold 

 meaning expressed by the terms, the 

 Real (rb 5i>), the Unreal (rb JUT; Sv), 

 and the truly Real (rb Svras tv), is 

 to be found in the Platonic Dialogue, 

 ' The Sophist,' and Benj. Jowett, in 

 his Introduction to the translation 

 of this Dialogue, has brought the 

 treatment of the problem into 

 juxtaposition with that of Hegel. 

 Through the latter, indeed, the 

 problem passed into its more 

 recent forms, one of which, that 

 adopted by Lotze, identifies the 

 truly Real with that which has 

 value or worth ; whereas another, 

 that of Mr Bradley, deals with the 

 problem in the doctrine of ' Degrees 

 of Reality ' (see his ' Appearance and 

 Reality,' chap, xxiv.) It is inter- 

 esting to read in the Introduction 



to this work the following state- 

 ment, very much in the tone of 

 the passage quoted from Lotze in 

 the last note : " The man who is 

 ready to prove that metaphysical 

 knowledge is wholly impossible has 

 no right ... to any answer. . . . 

 He is a brother metaphysician, with 

 a rival theory of first principles. 

 And this is so plain that I must 

 excuse myself from dwelling on the 

 point. To say the reality is such 

 that our knowledge cannot reach 

 it, is a claim to know reality ; to 

 urge that our knowledge is of a 

 kind which must fail to transcend 

 appearance itself implies that tran- 

 scendence. For if we had no idea 

 of a Beyond, we should assuredly 

 not know how to talk about failure 

 or success. And the test, by which 

 we distinguish them, must obvi- 



