After fifty years, an old milestone in the path of philosophy, Bradley's
_Ethical Studies_, has been set up again, as if to mark the distance which
English opinion has traversed in the interval. It has passed from insular
dogmatism to universal bewilderment; and a chief agent in the change has
been Bradley himself, with his scornful and delicate intellect, his wit,
his candour, his persistence, and the baffling futility of his
conclusions. In this early book we see him coming forth like a young David
against every clumsy champion of utilitarianism, hedonism, positivism, or
empiricism. And how smooth and polished were the little stones in his
sling! How fatally they would have lodged in the forehead of that
composite monster, if only it had had a forehead! Some of them might even
have done murderous execution in Bradley's own camp: for instance, this
pebble cast playfully at the metaphysical idol called "Law": "It is
_always_ wet on half-holidays because of the Law of Raininess, but
_sometimes_ it is _not_ wet, because of the Supplementary Law of
Sunshine".

Bradley and his friends achieved a notable victory in the academic field:
philosophic authority and influence passed largely into their hands in all
English-speaking universities. But it was not exactly from these seats of
learning that naturalism and utilitarianism needed to be dislodged; like
the corresponding radicalisms of our day, these doctrines prevailed rather
in certain political and intellectual circles outside, consciously
revolutionary and often half-educated; and I am afraid that the braggart
Goliaths of today need chastening at least as much as those of fifty years
ago. In a country officially Christian, and especially in Oxford, it is
natural and fitting that academic authority should belong to orthodox
tradition--theological, Platonic, and Aristotelian. Bradley, save for a
few learned quotations, strangely ignored this orthodoxy entrenched