PREFACE 



loses importance in his range of vision. The universal, little 

 understood, but powerfully felt, assumes ascendancy over his 

 imagination. He is like one who surveys the world of things 

 from a solitary mountain peak or from the centre of a bound- 

 less desert. Faiths spring up irf him which have closer 

 analogy with the first intuitions of primitive races than with 

 the logical and analytical systems of reasoned thought. Such 

 as they are, these penetrate his mind, and give peculiar tone 

 to all his utterances. The point of view from which many of 

 the more critical Essays in this collection have been written 

 would not be apparent without a frank expression of the 

 speculative thoughts that underlie them. I have, therefore, 

 not shrunk from committing myself to theories and surmises 

 which are advanced in no dogmatic spirit. To suggest ideas, 

 to stimulate reflection, is the object of a book like this. At 

 the same time, were I asked in what order these Essays ought 

 to be studied, I should recommend most people to leave ' The 

 Philosophy of Evolution ' unread, until one or another of 

 the following articles aroused in them some curiosity about 

 the author's views upon religion and man's relation to the 

 universe. 



DAVOS PLATZ, 



Feb. 24th, 1890. 



N.B. Seven of the following Essays have appeared, in whole or part, 

 in The Fortnightly Review, one in Time, and one in The Century Guild 

 Hobby-Horse. One has been extracted from a paper previously pub- 

 lished in my own ' Italian Byways.' All these have been re-written to 

 a large extent. The remaining ten, together with the Appendices, are 

 new, and come before the public for the first time now. 



