The English idealist philosopher Francis Herbert Bradley was born in Clapham and educated at University College, Oxford; in 1870 he was elected to a fellowship at Merton College, Oxford, terminable on marriage. Since he never married and the terms of the fellowship did not require him to teach, he was able to devote himself entirely to philosophical writing. His first published work was a pamphlet titled The Presuppositions of Critical History (Oxford, 1874). There followed Ethical Studies (London, 1876), Principles of Logic (London, 1883), and Appearance and Reality (London, 1893), as well as many articles in philosophical journals, some of which were published in Essays on Truth and Reality (Oxford, 1914) and others in Collected Essays (Oxford, 1935).

Like Bernard Bosanquet, Bradley was influenced by T. H. Green. Like Bosanquet, too, he read and admired G. W. F. Hegel, but was less in sympathy with Hegelianism than Bosanquet was...