HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY FROM THE LIBRARY OF JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS SECOND EDITION. UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, AND COMPANY, CAMBRIDGE. S PREFACE. EVERAL of the Essays which are here collected and reprinted have had the good or bad fortune to be much criticised at the time of their first appearance. I am not now going to inflict upon the reader a reply to those criticisms; for one or two explanations which are desirable I shall elsewhere, perhaps, be able some day to find an opportunity; but, indeed, it is not in my nature,- some of my critics would rather say, not in my power, - to dispute on behalf of any opinion, even my own, very obstinately. To try and approach Truth on one side after another, not to strive or cry, not to persist in pressing forward, on any one side, with violence and self-will, it is only thus, it seems to me, that mortals may hope to gain any vision of the mysterious Goddess, whom we shall never see except in outline, but only thus even in outline. He who will do nothing but fight impetuously towards her on his own, one, たい favorite, particular line, is inevitably destined to run his head into the folds of the black robe in which she is wrapped. I am very sensible that this way of thinking leaves me under great disadvantages in addressing a public composed from a people "the most logical," says the Saturday Review, "in the whole world." But the truth is, I |