INTRODUCTION 



If he did accept the chair, and with it the 

 odium of an anomalous position in the eyes 

 of the world, it must have been because he 

 had a secure and instinctive sense of his own 

 inner sufficiency for the office which raised 

 him above the superficial lack of dignity in 

 the conduct of his life. After all, the gravest 

 charge of unfitness that could be brought 

 against him, was his want of training as a sys- 

 tematic philosopher. How well he succeeded 

 in spite of this deficiency, the affectionate 

 testimony of his students sufficiently proves. 

 He became one of those great teachers of 

 the young, all the more potent for a touch 

 of winning worldliness, whose amplitude of 

 mind and character educates less by precept 

 than by conduct. He never became the scien- 

 tific pedagogue. Indeed his lectures were 

 most irregular, and often the result of sheer 

 improvisation. Absent-minded and unsyste- 

 matic, he frequently left the subject far 

 afield. But things of this sort niade little dif- 

 [ xvii J 



