Consult further:—F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, Introduction; L. T. Hobhouse, The Theory of Knowledge, Introduction; H. Lotze, Metaphysic, Introduction (Eng. trans., vol. i. pp. 1-30)
[1]. The name simply means “what comes after Physics,” and probably owes its origin to the fact that early editors of Aristotle placed his writings on ultimate philosophical questions immediately after his physical treatises.
[2]. For an example of these puzzles, compare the passage (Republic, 524) where Plato refers to cases in which an apparent contradiction in our sensations is corrected by counting.
[3]. Of course we must not assume that “every appearance is only appearance,” or that “nothing is both reality and appearance.” This is just the uncritical kind of preconception which it is the business of Metaphysics to test. Whether “every appearance is only appearance” is a point we shall have to discuss later.
[4]. Cf. F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, pp. 1-4.
[5]. I may be pardoned for reminding the reader who may be new to our subject, that “facts” and “processes” are only properly called phenomena when it is intended to imply that as they stand they are not genuine realities but only the partially misleading appearance of reality which is non-phenomenal or ultra-phenomenal. (We shall do well to avoid the pretentious error of calling the ultra-phenomenal, as such, “noumenal.”)
[6]. Appearance and Reality, chap. 12, p. 129 (ed. 1).
[7]. As, for instance, all mental states are, according to certain psychologists, non-quantitative.
[8]. The student will find Höffding’s History of Modern Philosophy (English translation in 2 vols., Macmillan) particularly valuable for the way in which the author brings out the intimate historical connection between the development of Metaphysics and the general progress of science.