He died an early death in 1881 from overwork as a barrister, secretary to the Oxford University Commission, and philosopher.

[1] In 1862, Barratt entered Balliol College, Oxford, and was elected to a scholarship in his first term alongside Edmund Martin Geldart.

In 1876, he began working on a new book called Physical Metempiric, and his focus on philosophy interfered with his legal career.

[1] In an obituary, The Times said that Barratt's work "had done much to hasten" the publication of the Oxford University Commission's report, and that in his death "the Junior Bar has lost one of its most gifted and most learned members.

The key theory of the book is the unity of all knowledge and the necessity of bringing ethics into harmony with literary power.

It leads to a system of monadism comparable to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's doctrine and theories such as William Kingdon Clifford's 'mindstuff'.