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VII

REALITY AND IDEALISM[1]

ARGUMENT

Four questions about Reality-(1) how do we come to assert it, (2) its primary character, (3) its criteria, (4) its ultimate character. Epistemological and metaphysical reality. Primarily everything is real, but none of the current criteria for sifting it absolutely trustworthy in theory. Their value is practical, and practical value is really the ultimate criterion. Can we claim speculative value for such a test? Yes, if the whole process of knowing be conceived as an attempt to render our experience harmonious. At present our success is imperfect, and so divergent views may still be taken of ultimate reality. Hence it is unnecessary to regard the real as a combination of abstract universals and quite possible to treat a plurality of individual persons as ultimate.

The readers of Mr. Ritchie's papers will have learnt by this time that they may expect to be entertained with a clear account of his views, neatly phrased and intelligibly presented, and not disdainful of an occasional touch of humour. And in these respects they will have not been disappointed by his brilliant disquisition on—What is reality?—in the May number of the Philosophical Review. But if they sought fresh light on one of the most puzzling and fundamental of philosophic problems, it is to be feared that they were not equally well satisfied. Mr. Ritchie's paper is polemical rather than investigatory, and he seems more concerned to make dialectical points against his adversaries than to probe his subject to the bottom. And as his adversaries' views are very various, and often have little in common but their disagreement

  1. ↑ From the Philosophical Review of September 1892. The late Professor D. G. Ritchie, whose premature demise 1, in common with all his pupils, have not ceased to deplore, reprinted the article to which this is a reply in a volume of essays entitled Darwin and Hegel (1893). pp. 77-108.

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