From the PREFACE. THIS little work embraces the article I read at the great exhibition at Chicago on "Reality: What Place it should hold in Philosophy." It also contains my little work, "The Prevailing Types of Philosophy: Can they logically reach Reality?" The work is, to some extent, negative and undermining; it points out a chasm in modern philosophy. I would not give it to the public were it not that I have previously presented the positive and constructive side in my larger work on "First and Fundamental Truth." I wish the two works to go together, as constituting what I have been able to do for fundamental philosophy. Agnosticism is upheld and propagated in the present day by several influential men, such as Mr. Herbert Spencer and Professor Huxley. It is in the air, and our young men have to breathe it and suffer the consequences. It is evidently exercising a relaxing influence on the faith and doctrinal convictions of the rising generation. It is in my view the grand office, at present, of the higher philosophy, to meet and expose this doubting spirit. The question is, are the philosophies of the day fitted to do this? With our eyes open, we are apt to look on the scene at some distance, rather than on things that are pressingly near and supposed to be known. So it is with modern metaphysicians (it was different with the ancient Greeks); they direct their attention to more remote objects rather than those which are close to us, such as Reality. We know self and certain things around us as Real; Ens, Being, Existence. Now this Reality requires to be carefully considered by students of the First Philosophy, as Aristotle happily called it. I am to show that Reality is a truth to be assumed, and that no attempt need or should be made to establish it by mediate proof. Of those who have made the attempt, it will be found that they have more in the conclusion than they have in the premises, and that in fact they have assumed reality in order to prove it. Mr. Spencer, the most comprehensive speculator of the day, has brought philosophy to a crisis. He is doing for later speculation, especially that of Kant and Hamilton, what Hume did for the systems of Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley, that is, bringing them to a "reductio ad absurdum" by showing that they deprive us of all knowledge of the nature of things. Philosophy has to start anew on the track of realism. I am not satisfied with the agnostic position of Spencer; I am also dissatisfied with the replies commonly made to him;" they have tried to prove reality, instead of showing that we are entitled to assume it. I am aware that the realistic views presented in this work are so different from the prevailing ones-are, in fact, so revolutionary - that it will be needful to press them upon the attention of thinkers before they are adopted. This will have to be done by men who have greater influence among metaphysicians than I have been able to attain. Of the ultimate reception of these views on Reality (it may be somewhat modified) I have not a remaining doubt.