DISCUSSIONS.
REALITY AND "IDEALISM."
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 humor. 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 with Mr. Ritchie's, and as, moreover, they are not stated or definitely referred to, the total effect is somewhat confusing. Nor is the confusion improved by the way in which Mr. Ritchie discusses some two or three different questions about reality in the same breath. The justification in his mind for this procedure evidently lies in the fact that they all offer a basis for objections to his own views, which he would, perhaps, not object to have called Neo-Hegelian. But this does not constitute any intrinsic kinship between the views he criticises, and his discussion would have gained largely, if he had added to his classification of the various sorts of reality a classification of the various questions that may be raised about it. It would be too much, perhaps, to expect Mr. Ritchie to excel the rest of his school as much in substance as he does in style, but it seems evident that he has, as little as they, kept clear of the Hegelian confusion of epistemology and metaphysics, to which Professor Seth has of late drawn so much attention. There are at least four questions, which Mr. Ritchie's paper trenches upon. They are —
I. How do we know that there is any reality at all, or how do we come to assert an external world?
II. What is reality at the beginning of inquiry, i.e. what is the primary datum to be explained?
III. How is it to be explained by what criteria do we inquire into reality?
IV. What does reality turn out to be after inquiry?
