accumulating experiences of life and of thought slowly enrich the judgement. And this, one need hardly say, is especially true in such regions of thought as present the most tenuous media for the progress of thought by the comparatively clumsy means of syllogistic locomotion. For the further we ascend from the solid ground of verification, the less confidence should we place in our wings of speculation, while the more do we find the practical wisdom of such intellectual caution, or distrust of ratiocination, as can be given only by experience. Therefore, most of all is this the case in those departments of thought which are furthest from the region of our sensuous life--viz. metaphysics and religion. And, as a matter of fact, it is just in these departments of thought that we find the rashness of youth most amenable to the discipline in question by the experience of age. However, in spite of this confession, I have no doubt that even in the matter of pure and conscious reason further thought has enabled me to detect serious errors, or rather oversights, in the very foundations of my _Candid Examination of Theism_. I still think, indeed, that from the premises there laid down the conclusions result in due logical sequence, so that, as a matter of mere ratiocination, I am not likely ever to detect any serious flaws, especially as this has not been done by anybody else during the many years of its existence. But I now clearly perceive two wellnigh fatal oversights which I then committed. The first was undue confidence in merely syllogistic conclusions, even when derived from sound premises, in regions of such high abstraction. The second was, in not being sufficiently careful in examining the foundations of my criticism, i.e. the validity of its premises. I will here briefly consider these two points separately. As regards the first point, never was any one more arrogant in his claims for pure reason than I was--more arrogant in spirit though not in letter, this being due to contact with science; without ever considering how opposed to reason itself is the unexpressed assumption of my earlier argument as to God Himself, as if His existence were a merely physical problem to be solved by man's reason alone, without reference to his other and higher faculties[37]. The second point is of still more importance, because so seldom, if ever, recognized.