SOURCE: A review of The Nature of Existence, in The Hibbert Journal, Vol. XX, No. 1, October, 1921, pp. 172-75.

In the following review of The Nature of Existence, Broad praises the first volume of the treatise despite reservations about several of McTaggart's conclusions, particularly his tendency to take certain propositions to be self-evident.

For the last twenty years or so the labours of philosophers have been devoted rather to the investigation of the nature and certainty of alleged scientific knowledge than to the attempt to determine the nature of Reality as a whole by abstract reasoning. This limitation has been mainly the result of bitter experience of the futility of previous attempts at speculative metaphysics. A distrust of elaborate philosophical systems has always characterised England in general, and of late years has been specially characteristic of Cambridge in particular. To all these rules Dr M‘Taggart is probably the...