 Details about the life of John Cook Wilson, or ‘Cook Wilson’ as he is commonly called, may be found in a memoir published in 1926 by his pupil A. S. L. Farquharson, in his edition of Cook Wilson’s posthumous writings, Statement and Inference with other Philosophical Papers (SI, xii–lxiv). He was born in Nottingham on June 6, 1849, the son of a Methodist minister. Educated at Derby Grammar School, he went up to Balliol College in 1868, elected on an exhibition set up by Benjamin Jowett for students from less privileged schools. At Balliol, Cook Wilson read classics with Henry Chandler, from whom he certainly got his penchant for minutiae, and mathematics with Henry J. S. Smith. He also studied philosophy with Jowett and T. H. Green, who steered him towards Kant and idealism (SI, 880), along with other students from his generation, such as Bernard Bosanquet, F. H. Bradley, Richard Lewis Nettleship and William Wallace. He even went to Göttingen in 1873–74 to attend lectures by Hermann Lotze (SI, xxvii), whose portrait he kept in his study. Cook Wilson wrote late in his life that “from the first I would not commit myself even to the most attractive form of idealism, tho’ greatly attracted by it” (SI, 815). Farquharson also mentions Friedrich Ueberweg’s System of Logic and History of Logical Doctrines (Ueberweg 1871) as an early ‘realist’ influence (SI, 880). If we are to follow Prichard, however, Cook Wilson abandoned idealism “with extreme hesitation” (Prichard 1919, 309) and “it was only towards the close of his life that he really seemed to find himself” (Prichard 1919, 318). (See also on this point Farquharson’s reminiscence in (SI, xix).)