Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/31

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
xxviii
PREFACE

and emphasis as they go on towards the end of the volume.

The several papers have been very variously occasioned, and have been written at varying dates, covering a period of something like twenty years. The reader who cares to do so can follow up their chronology in the appended foot-notes. In the earlier papers considerable changes have here and there been made from the form in which they were originally printed, in order to bring all their statements into harmony with the governing view. In their original form, monism of an Hegelian type played no small part, side by side with the strongest affirmations of personal reality and individual freedom, — a collocation, it would seem, rather characteristic of Hegelianism than not. At the date of their first production I had not become aware of the hopeless contradiction between the two views. Those who feel the curiosity, can dig the originals out of their hiding-places in the journals, and see them with all their sins of inconsistency upon their heads. But I trust these earlier attempts may be left to a natural oblivion. It is only to the form given them in this volume, that I should wish readers to refer for the expression of my mature opinions.

I have to thank the editors of the New World, the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and the Overland Monthly for their kindness in permitting me to use