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 " Comte's Positive 

 Philosophy " serve to explain some crude expres- 

 sions in the paper on Buckle which might other- 

 wise be interpreted as the words of a " Positivist." 

 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. " Agnostic," 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 " Positivist " 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 



