VI PREFACE 



seem that in 1873 my Father, perceiving in him- 

 self no intellectual decline, made up his mind to 

 bestow upon the papers this c laborious revision.' 

 For, during my last journey with him in Italy, in 

 the autumn of 1873 a journey from which he only 

 returned to die two days after his arrival in Brook 

 Street my Father often spoke of this as his in- 

 tention ; and in a manuscript book which he had with 

 him at Borne I find the following entry, which I give 

 here in full, both because it is an excellent comment 

 upon the essays published in this volume, and also 

 because it is the very last of the writings of Sir Henry 

 Holland : 



ROME: Octobers, 1873. 



I put the first pen here to a volume which I shall 

 continue at intervals, if health of body and mind be still 

 continued to me. The following is the object proposed : 



In my desk are numerous papers or essays, chiefly written 

 within the last ten or twelve years. The subjects they treat 

 of are, partly, the discoveries and speculations of modern 

 physical science ; partly, those great problems of human life 

 in its various relations to the world around, which have been 

 touched upon in all ages of philosophy, but have become 

 better defined in our own day, in effect of those stricter laws 

 of induction which have been imposed upon human thought 

 however directed. 



In writing these papers I made it a chief object to define 

 as far as possible, for my own instruction, the knowledge 

 actually attained on each subject; the direction and possible 

 attainments of the future; and the limits which in their 

 very nature are impassable by human reason or research. 

 Looking recently over these papers after the lapse of some 



