[30] _Nature_, April 5, 1883.




PART II.




+Introductory Note by the Editor+.


Little more requires to be said by way of introduction to the Notes
which are all that George Romanes was able to write of a work that was
to have been entitled _A Candid Examination of Religion_. What little
does require to be said must be by way of bridging the interval of
thought which exists between the Essays which have just preceded and the
Notes which represent more nearly his final phase of mind.

The most anti-theistic feature in the Essays is the stress laid in them
on the evidence which Nature supplies, or is supposed to supply,
antagonistic to the belief in the goodness of God.

On this mysterious and perplexing subject George Romanes appears to have
had more to say but did not live to say it[31]. We may notice however
that in 1889, in a paper read before the Aristotelian Society, on 'the
Evidence of Design in Nature[32],' he appears to allow more weight than
before to the argument that the method of physical development must be