OF REALITY. 533 



pendent work should appear, in which the fundamental 

 problems of Knowing and Being were systematically 

 treated, without that learned ballast which so frequently 

 obscures the way instead of marking it clearly. This 

 explains the great impression which Mr F. H. Bradley's 59. _ 

 writings created, and among them notably his meta- 'Appear- 

 physical treatise ' On Appearance and Reality.' It may Reality.- 

 be regarded as the centre of an independent movement 

 of Philosophical Thought in this country. Nearly all 

 that has since appeared in the English language in the 

 realm of Logic and Metaphysics has started from, or 

 been influenced by, Mr Bradley's analysis. It may be 

 said that he has forced every thinker in this country 

 to face the problem of Reality, or, as he calls it, of the 

 " Absolute " — a term which Herbert Spencer and he have 

 introduced into English philosophical literature. It is 

 the problem of the truly Real, of the 6vra>c ov as dis- 

 tinguished from the ov and the nn ov of Plato. Mr 

 Bradley's work has been very variously criticised ; a 

 .conclusive verdict has not yet been pronounced upon it. 

 Nor is it in the spirit of this history to enter on a 

 detailed exposition of its many-sided argument. It will 

 be enough if we briefly note the special direction it has 

 given to philosophical thought in this country, and the 

 position it takes up with reference to the two great 

 doctrines which dominated philosophical thought in the 

 middle of the century — the psychological Atomism of the 

 English school and the critical Transcendentalism im- 

 ported from abroad, and which there emanated from 

 Kant. 



Students of philosophy who are intimately acquainted 



