Baron Friedrich von Hügel, the Roman Catholic philosopher of religion and writer on mysticism, was born in Florence, Italy, and succeeded to his father's (Austrian) title in 1870. Most of his life was spent in England. His most important writings were The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in St. Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends (London, 1908), Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion (London, 1921 and 1926), and The Reality of God (published posthumously; London, 1931).

Von Hügel's philosophical position was opposed both to idealism and to what he called positivism. By positivism he meant the doctrine that knowledge is exclusively confined to sense perceptions and to the laws that connect them. He rejected this position on the grounds that sense experience is accompanied by a strong "pressure on our minds" to credit it...