The philosophers who are generally known as Idealists have interpreted the doctrine of idealism in different ways. But, all of them, more, or less, considers the universe of our experience not as an 'objective reality'[1] but as a 'subjective reality'.
Adequate discussion of the divergent views held by different idealist-philosophers would demand very much more space than we are free to grant to the topic of this book. All that we can do here is to deal with the broad outlines of some of the leading forms of this doctrine.