an end in itself and for itself by a creature whose understanding is of pure or real (noumenal) Being. Everything is explainable to us, constituted as we are, only on this principle of Sufficient reason, the ultimate good for Being; as the means to this end present suffering and even permitted sin are conceivably good as assisting through intellectual, emotional, and moral development a thorough realisation of the order of the universe." The author also adds, "I have to apologise for having presented quotations in verse in the form of rugged prose to back out my arguments; but as it has been said that 'It is the audible where the value of measured verse is alone of value,' I must beg my readers to remember that it is simply as bearing logical testimony to the emotional nature of man, or to the principle of relativity, to the supremacy of its joys and to the bottomless depths of its anguish, that I have inserted these quotations from the poets." The original essay was written three years ago, and a few copies printed for private circulation. My work has been to draw out a scheme, rearrange the matter so as to bring under general heads those parts which treated of the same subject, to give form to thoughts expressed vivá voce, and combine with the printed text such new matter, together with that given me in notes by the author. I have striven as far as possible to give the author's own words, and as to the greater part, especially the conclusion, I have been able to do so. Where it was not possible, I have endeavoured to render faithfully the thoughts. There is one remark I wish to make. I have been very much struck, while engaged in this work, by observing that modes of expression and thoughts which one believes to be one's own are often to be found in other authors. With regard to the first, I suppose it is true that although, as Mr. Alexander J. Ellis states, "we each have our own peculiar language," there is much that is common in modes of expression to the thinkers and writers of any given period-“ a generic agreement with specific disagreement." As touching the thoughts, I suppose it is a certain characteristic way of looking at things common to minds of a certain order that accounts for two or more authors coinciding in thought independently of each other. I think it is of deepest interest that certain germ-thoughts seem to spring up in the minds of many, perhaps far-scattered thinkers, at about the same period in the world's development. That this is so is, I believe, one of the "good gifts" of the Father of Lights; and that it greatly aids the development, of which it is probably the outcome, cannot, I think, be doubted. For it secures a much quicker and more appreciative reception for the works of those great thinkers in whose minds these germthoughts fructify; and as in each of the comparative few who are thus enabled to work out and develop them the development always assumes a different form, reflective of the personality of the thinker, the light must be greatly increased by the blending of all these scattered rays." The author of the present work feels that just as the rules of arithmetic afford a secure basis for all the monetary transactions of the world, so what is here given is a vade-mecum for rational thinking and for the conduct of life. "The science of thought is the science or knowledge of human life." July 1881. M. S. HANDLEY. CONTENTS. 1. The Great Want of a Clear Conception of the Natural or Typical 3. A Threefold Process-three Principles or Intuitions: Suffi- 4. The Genesis of the Ideas of Reason shown in the Mind of a 5. Importance of Realising the Necessary Inferences-this only 8. The Author's Views compared with the Comtist Doctrines of 9. Our own Want of Development in Feeling, Thought, and Will, 10. The Fallacy of Altruism, or the Substitution of the Happiness of others for the Happiness of the Ego, instead of the |