734 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



both of Hegel and Herbart. It may be defined in 

 general as an attempt to answer the many questions 

 which arise as to the meaning of those abstract terms, 

 such as " reality," " appearance," " experience," &c., 

 which we continually use in ordinary as well as in 

 scientific and philosophical reasoning. It is akin to the 

 dialectic of Hegel's Logic as well as to the Bearbeitung 

 der Erfahrungsbegriffe of Herbart. It introduces, inter alia, 

 the idea of " degrees " of reality in order to solve the 

 problem mentioned above, and aims at fixing our thoughts 

 upon the problem of the ultimate or highest reality, 

 which is termed the Absolute. There is no attempt to 

 solve logical and metaphysical questions by recourse to 

 mechanical analogies, and it is accordingly purely intro- 

 spective. In approaching the problem of the unity or 

 harmony of thought and knowledge, it urges not so much 

 the internal unity of consciousness as the necessity for 

 the human mind of orderly or systematic unity. The 

 totality of things is conceived as a system, special 

 points and features being ultimately intelligible only 

 by looking at the whole. Without using the exact 

 term, the work is really a treatise on the "synoptic" 

 aspect of reality. 



Although we find in recent philosophical literature in 

 this country the two schools of thought of which Ward 

 and Bradley may be considered the leaders frequently 

 treated as separate or opposed, they are at one in urging 

 an idealistic view of the world and Life, and in employ- 

 ing the introspective method, though in the one case this 

 is more distinctly psychological, in the other more 

 distinctly logical. But in their latest respective de- 



