ent mind.

ARGYLL.

INVERARY CASTLE, SCOTLAND,
_September, 1882._

* * * * *

{7}

NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.

The consideration which this work has received from the leaders of
religious and philosophic thought in Germany, and, indeed, wherever it has
been read in its original form, has led the translator to believe that an
English version of it would be acceptable. Especially in America, where
religious problems and religious thought are so intimately connected with
the processes of scientific and philosophic investigation, and where the
agitation of these problems is so peculiarly active and violent, it has
seemed that a work marked by so much scholarship, profundity, and
comprehensiveness and originality of treatment, must serve an important
purpose to the cause of religious no less than of scientific truth. It may
be explained here, that the author resided for some years in the family of
the Duke of Argyll, and there breathed, to a certain extent, the scientific
air of Darwinism in its very origin; and thus his familiarity with all the
results of modern scientific research, added to his theological and
philosophical acquirements, enable him, with a most admirable blending of
the spirit of fairness and toleration with logical severity of treatment,
to bring these different domains into their proper relation with each other
and to establish between them that essential harmony in which consists the
solution of these most profound and vital problems of man's welfare.

Of the translation it may properly be said that, while the aim has been to
give the work the clearest possible form consistent with that strict
fidelity to the original which is {8} especially demanded by the character
of its material, the translator has not hoped to make the work altogether
"easy" reading. Peculiarities of the author's style have been, it is
believed, largely preserved; and occasional difficulties of apprehension
are no doubt to be expected, both from the method of treatment and from the
profound and abstruse character of the topics treated. The translator will
be well satisfied if it shall be found that he has succeeded in performing
his task without adding unduly to the seeming obscurities of certain
passages--obscurities which, however, will no doubt vanish before that
degree of mental application without which such works may not be read at
all intelligibly.

Acknowledgments are properly