question as to their objective justification, it is only in advanced
years that I have clearly perceived wherein the first principles of such
a research must consist. And I doubt whether any one has hitherto
clearly defined this point. The principles in question are the nature of
causation and the nature of faith.


My objects then in this treatise are, mainly, three: 1st, to purify
agnosticism; 2nd, to consider more fully than heretofore, and from the
stand-point of pure agnosticism, the nature of natural causation, or,
more correctly, the relation of what we know on the subject of such
causation to the question of Theism; and, 3rd, again starting from the
same stand-point, to consider the religious consciousnesses of men as
phenomena of experience (i.e. as regarded by us from without), and
especially in their highest phase of development as exhibited in
Christianity.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] [I.e. supernatural but not strictly Divine Persons. Surely,
however, the proposition is not maintainable.--ED.]

[39] [This is another instance of recurrence to an earlier thought; see
Burney Essay, p. 25, and cf. _Mind and Motion and Monism_, p. 117, note
1.--ED.]

[40] _Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_, i. 308.

[41] [See further, p. 182.--ED.]