The Individual and Reality: An Essay Touching the First Principles of Metaphysics (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Individual and Reality: An Essay Touching the First Principles of MetaphysicsThis work is not a continuation of my Riddle (1893), but supersedes it. I do not regret having penned the latter. Read with "enormous satisfaction" by a critic such as Professor William James, it was evidently not written in vain. Some of its novelties are to reappear, in fact, here. But my abandonment of the Monadology and considerable advances in other directions furnish reason that I should start afresh.Those who followed the Monadology with interest may care to learn that I made every effort to save it, but found the task impracticable. After a pause of some fifteen years, I have replaced it with the new form of Idealism which is presented here. The Monads - even the time-honoured human "egos" - disappear.The work is just an essay on some disputed first principles of metaphysics, and has no pretensions to be called a treatise. Its main aim is to indicate the foundations on which the metaphysics of the future may be built. The riddle before us is that as to the general nature of Reality at large - of the universe. And the solution offered may be regarded as an alternative to that reached by Bradley, also an idealist, in his famous Appearance and Reality: a work which I have had continually in mind.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.