AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



THE epithets, speculative and suggestive, have not been 

 given to these Essays without due consideration. Written in 

 the isolation of this Alpine retreat, they express the opinions 

 and surmisings of one who long has watched in solitude, ' as 

 from a ruined tower,' the world of thought, and circumstance, 

 and action. To such an one it may, perhaps, be pardoned 

 if he prove a trifle whimsical in speculation and fantastic in 

 suggestion. I am aware that the first, second, and sixteenth 

 Essays will be judged, by many who may read them, to 

 exceed the bounds of that critical common-sense which is 

 recommended in the third. Possibly my prolonged seclusion 

 from populous cities and the society of intellectual equals a 

 seclusion which has lasted now, with short and occasional 

 interruptions, through twelve years the renunciation of am- 

 bitious aims and active interests implied in such a life, and 

 the peculiar influences to which those are subjected who 

 spend a seven months' winter, year after year, among white 

 snow-drifts and inhospitable, storm-swept mountains, have 

 bred in me a mystical habit of regarding man's relation to 

 the universe. In these conditions, and forced by broken 

 health to meditate upon the problem of approaching death, 

 a student comes insensibly to think more of nature and the 

 world, less of humanity and self, than when he is swimming 

 down the stream of competitive existence. The particular 



