Appearance and Reality

"One of the most important books that have been published during the last twenty-five years."— J. H. Muirhead in Literary Guide. " This is a truly great book. It is one of supreme interest and importance to the student of Ethics, as well as to the student of Metaphysics. Every particular thing in it is delightful. The style, though often paradoxical, is singularly bright and attractive. It is hardly too much to say that the book is altogether the most important independent work on Metaphysics that has ever been written in English." — International Journal of Ethics. "This book must be studied and reckoned with by all students of Metaphysics."— Guardian. APPEARANCE AND REALITY 1 H metaphysical lEssa? BY F. H. BRADLEY, LL.D. Glasgow Fellow of Merton College, Oxford SIXTH IMPRESSION (CORRECTED) LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. First Edition, June, 1893 ; Second Edition (with an Appendix), February, 1897 Third Impression, June, 1899; Fourth Impression, February, 1906; Fifth Impression (corrected), November, 1908; Sixth Impression (corrected), June, 1916. TO MY FRIEND E R THIS UNWORTHY VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. PREFACE. I have described the following work as an essay in metaphysics. Neither in form nor extent does it carry out the idea of a system. Its subject indeed is central enough to justify the exhaustive treatment of every problem. But what I have done is incomplete, and what has been left undone has often been omitted arbitrarily. The book is a more or less desultory handling of perhaps the chief questions in metaphysics. There were several reasons why I did not attempt a more systematic treatise, and to carry out even what I proposed has proved enough for my powers.…