I plead that the Scientific Spirit of the Age, while it has given us many precious things, is, in its present exorbitant development, depriving us of things more precious still. I plead that the Education of the Emotions (to be carried on chiefly through the contagion of good and noble sentiments) is an object of paramount importance, albeit nearly totally ignored in ordinary systems of education. I plead that, in the present disintegration of all religious opinion, Judaism may yet become a progressive, and cease to be merely a tribal, faith; and that, if it absorb the moral and spiritual essence of Christianity, it may solve the great problem of combining a theology consonant to modern philosophy with a worship hallowed by the sacred associations of the remotest past. In the last three Essays, I discuss the relation of Knowledge to Happiness; I discuss the real—as distinguished from the conventional—character of our common processes of Thought; and, finally, I discuss the respective claims of Town and Country Life to be esteemed most healthy and felicitous for body and mind. I shall much rejoice if I win my readers to adopt the opinions which I have advocated in the first half of the book. I shall remain altogether indifferent as to which of the alternative views put forth in the concluding Essays may seem to them most impressive, and only congratulate myself if I shall have succeeded in setting forth in due light and order the multitudinous points which together constitute the materials for forming a sound judgment upon them. FRANCES POWER COBBE. HENGWRT, DOLGELLY, 1888. ESSAY I. THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE.