 Educated at Oxford in the closing days of the great European idealist movement, Taylor was early influenced by the school of British Idealism, especially neo-Hegelianism.He was educated at New College, where he obtained a First in Literae Humaniores or 'Greats' in 1891 and held a prize fellowship at Merton College (1891–96).His first major book, "Elements of Metaphysics" (1903), dedicated (in heartfelt acknowledgment) to F. H. Bradley, is a systematic treatise of metaphysics covering such topics as ontology, cosmology, and rational psychology, and influenced by such luminaries as Josiah Royce, James Ward, George Frederick Stout, Richard Avenarius, and Hugo Munsterberg, as well as Robert Adamson, Wilhelm Ostwald, Bertrand Russell, and even Louis Couturat.