 In the first series of Gifford lectures, The Principle of Individuality and Value, Bosanquet holds that when we speak of ‘the real’ or ‘truth’, we have in mind a ‘whole’ (i.e., a system of connected members), and it is by seeing a thing in its relation to others that we can say not only that we have a better knowledge of that thing, but that it is, as Bosanquet writes, “more complete”, more true, and more real. Since this whole is self-contained and self-sufficient, Bosanquet calls it (following Aristotle) an ‘individual’. But because of its ‘independence’ and self explanatory character or necessity, it is also a universal. The ‘whole’ is, then, what Bosanquet calls a “concrete universal”. This “logical universal as a living world” he calls “individuality” or “the Absolute” (op. cit., p. xx), and the metaphysical position he adopts is often referred to ‘absolute idealism’.