However, in spite of this confession, I have no doubt that even in the
matter of pure and conscious reason further thought has enabled me to
detect serious errors, or rather oversights, in the very foundations of
my _Candid Examination of Theism_. I still think, indeed, that from the
premises there laid down the conclusions result in due logical sequence,
so that, as a matter of mere ratiocination, I am not likely ever to
detect any serious flaws, especially as this has not been done by
anybody else during the many years of its existence. But I now clearly
perceive two wellnigh fatal oversights which I then committed. The first
was undue confidence in merely syllogistic conclusions, even when
derived from sound premises, in regions of such high abstraction. The
second was, in not being sufficiently careful in examining the
foundations of my criticism, i.e. the validity of its premises. I will
here briefly consider these two points separately.

As regards the first point, never was any one more arrogant in his
claims for pure reason than I was--more arrogant in spirit though not in
letter, this being due to contact with science; without ever considering
how opposed to reason itself is the unexpressed assumption of my earlier
argument as to God Himself, as if His existence were a merely physical
problem to be solved by man's reason alone, without reference to his
other and higher faculties[37].

The second point is of still more importance, because so seldom, if
ever, recognized.

At the time of writing the _Candid Examination_ I perceived clearly how
the whole question of Theism from the side of reason turned on the
question as to the nature of natural causation. My theory of natural
causation obeyed the Law of Parsimony, resolving all into Being as such;