Here, then, we have a very fair specimen of the pseudo-philosophy which is so admirably adapted to captivate the half-informed, wholly unformed minds of the undiscriminating multitudes who have been taught little or nothing well except to believe in their right, duty, and ability to judge for themselves in matters for which a life-time of specialization were barely sufficient. A congeries of dogmatic assertions and negations raked together from the chief writers of a decadent school, discredited twenty years ago by all men of thought, Christian or otherwise; a show of logical order and reasoning which evades our grasp the instant we try to lay critical hands on it; a profuse expression of disinterested devotion to abstract truth, an occasional bow to conventional morality, a racy, irreverent style, an elaborate display of miscellaneous information; good paper, large type, cheap wood-cuts, and the work is done. _Oct. Nov._ 1895. [Footnote 1: M.S. 319.] [Footnote 2: Ibid. 319.] [Footnote 3: M.S. 229, 230.] [Footnote 4: P.F. 279.] [Footnote 5: P.F. 280] [Footnote 6: Ibid.] [Footnote 7: P.F. 281, 282.] [Footnote 8: Ibid.] [Footnote 9: Ibid. 210.] [Footnote: 10 M.S. Preface] [Footnote 11: "These subjects ... have been to me the solace of a long life, the delight of _many quiet days_, and the soother of many troubled ones ... a source of enjoyment. "'The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.'" (H.O. 3.)] [Footnote: 12 M.S. 319.] [Footnote: 13 Ibid. 320.] [Footnote: 14 Cf. Ibid. 104, 282.] [Footnote 15: This expression seems inconsistent with his here and elsewhere explicit maintenance of the hereditary transmission of gathered moral experiences. He means here to exclude innate ideas of morality as explained by Kant and by other intuitionists.] [Footnote 16: M.S. 180.] [Footnote 17: M.S. 285.] [Footnote 18: M.S. 216.] [Footnote 19: M.S. 294.] [Footnote 20: M.S. 298, 299.] [Footnote 21: P.F. 297. "The truth is that morals are built on a far surer foundation than that of creeds, which are here to-day and gone to-morrow. They are built on the solid rock of experiences, and of the 'survival of the fittest,' which in the long evolution of the human race from primeval savages, have by 'natural selection' and 'heredity' become almost instinctive." (How careless is this terminology. In the previous page he denies morality to be a matter of hereditary instinct.)] [Footnote 22: P.F. 206.] [Footnote 23: Ibid. 207.] [Footnote 24: P.P. 204.] [Footnote 25: M.S. Preface.] [Footnote 26: H.O. 3.] [Footnote 27: P.P. 3.] [Footnote 28: "The simple undoubting faith which for ages has been the support and consolation of a large portion of mankind, especially of the weak, the humble, the unlearned, who form an immense majority, cannot disappear without a painful wrench, and leaving for a time a great blank behind." (M.S. 284.)] [Footnote 29: xxxiii.]