disagreement with its contents made me fear that I might be prejudiced
in withholding it.

The Notes, with the papers which precede them, will, I think, be better
understood if I give some preliminary account of their antecedents, that
is of Romanes' previous publications on the subject of religion.

In 1873 an essay of George Romanes gained the Burney Prize at Cambridge,
the subject being _Christian Prayer considered in relation to the belief
that the Almighty governs the world by general laws_. This was published
in 1874, with an appendix on _The Physical Efficacy of Prayer_. In this
essay, written when he was twenty-five years old, Romanes shows the
characteristic qualities of his mind and style already developed. The
sympathy with the scientific point of view is there, as might be
expected perhaps in a Cambridge 'Scholar in Natural Science': the
logical acumen and love of exact distinctions is there: there too the
natural piety and spiritual appreciation of the nature of Christian
prayer--a piety and appreciation which later intellectual habits of
thought could never eradicate. The essay, as judged by the standard of
prize compositions, is of remarkable ability, and strictly proceeds
within the limits of the thesis. On the one side, for the purpose of the
argument, the existence of a Personal God is assumed[1], and also the
reality of the Christian Revelation which assures us that we have reason
to expect real answers, even though conditionally and within restricted
limits, to prayers for _physical_ goods[2]. On the other side, there is
taken for granted the belief that general laws pervade the observable
domain of physical nature. Then the question is considered--how is the
physical efficacy of prayer which the Christian accepts on the authority
of revelation compatible with the scientifically known fact that God
governs the world by general laws? The answer is mainly found in
emphasizing the limited sphere within which scientific inquiry can be
conducted and scientific knowledge can obtain. Special divine acts of
response to prayer, even in the physical sphere, _may_ occur--force
_may_ be even originated in response to prayer--and still not produce
any phenomenon such as science must take cognizance of and regard as
miraculous or contrary to the known order.

On one occasion the Notes refer back to this essay[3], and more
frequently, as we shall have occasion to notice, they reproduce thoughts
which had alread