ABSTRACT
By the neo-idealist movement we mean the influx of German philosophical Idealism into British thought. The influx did not become considerable until the ’sixties and ’seventies of last century, a full generation after the death of Hegel. If the characteristic of British philosophy up to the beginning of this movement is that it kept to the firm lines of a native and relatively isolated tradition, and was as unsympathetic to violent incursions from without as it was to revolutions from within, the significance of the new movement is precisely that with it a complete change set in, entirely new forms and contents of thought being seized and held fast, and a foreign and hitherto unknown stock of ideas being added to the store of British thought. Neo-Idealism, making its way into England at an important turning-point, thereby stands not merely for an immense widening, enrichment, and deepening of doctrinal content, but also and fundamentally for a complete recoil from the old ways, a turning of the philosophical rudder in an entirely new direction.
