[23] A note (of 1893) contains the following: 'Being, considered in the abstract, is logically equivalent to Not-Being or Nothing. For if by successive stages of abstraction, we divest the conception of Being of attribute and relation we reach the conception of that which cannot be, i.e. a logical contradiction, or the logical correlative of Being which is Nothing. (All this is well expressed in Caird's _Evolution of Religion_.) The failure to perceive this fact constitutes a ground fallacy in my _Candid Examination of Theism_, where I represent Being as being a sufficient explanation of the Order of Nature or the law of Causation.' [24] This promise is only partially fulfilled in the penultimate paragraph of the essay.--ED. [25] _Essays_, vol. iii. p. 246 et seq. The whole passage ought to be consulted, being too long to quote here. [26] In an essay on Prof. Flint's _Theism_, appended to the _Candid Examination_. [27] _A Candid Examination of Theism_, pp. 171-2. [28] [I have, as Editor, resisted a temptation to intervene in the above argument. But I think I may intervene on a matter of fact, and point out that 'according to the theological theory of things,' i.e. according to the Trinitarian doctrine, God's Nature consists in what is strictly 'analogous to social relations,' and He not merely exhibits in His creation, but Himself _is_ Love. See, on the subject, especially, R.H. Hutton's essay on the Incarnation, in his _Theological Essays_ (Macmillan).--ED.] [29] _Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution_, pp. 76-7. [30] _Nature_, April 5, 1883. PART II. +Introductory Note by the Editor+. Little more requires to be said by way of introduction to the Notes which are all that George Romanes was able to write of a work that was to have been entitled _A Candid Examination of Religion_. What little does require to be said must be by way of bridging the interval of thought which exists between the Essays which have just preceded and the Notes which represent more nearly his final phase of mind. The most anti-theistic feature in the Essays is the stress laid in them on the evidence which Nature supplies, or is supposed to supply, antagonistic to the belief in the goodness of God.