vi Prefatory Note. 



become more and more sacred in memory as the 

 years pass by, even while it is hoped there may 

 be yet others like them in reserve ; and whatever 

 recalls them, however indirectly, becomes en 

 deared to me. 



Having for such reasons, largely personal, re- 

 published this article, I have found it so well re 

 ceived and so kindly mentioned that it has seemed 

 worth while to look up and add to this somewhat 

 miscellaneous collection three other youthful writ 

 ings. The brief remarks on &quot; Comte s Positive 

 Philosophy &quot; serve to explain some crude expres 

 sions in the paper on Buckle which might other 

 wise be interpreted as the words of a &quot; Positivist.&quot; 

 After twenty years of vigorous and untiring pro 

 test, I believe we may congratulate ourselves that 

 we have got that wretched label pretty thoroughly 

 torn off. &quot; Agnostic,&quot; which seems for the time 

 to have replaced it, is meaningless enough, and I 

 for one no more accept it than I accepted the old 

 epithet. But its utter vagueness renders it com 

 paratively harmless, whereas &quot; Positivist &quot; was a 

 word brimful of meaning. It connoted almost 

 everything in the shape of hasty superficial gen 

 eralization and overweening intellectual arro 

 gance which the true servant and interpreter of 

 Nature instinctively and rightly abhors. We may 



