creed. of English Puritanism, I am grateful for it, as I believe that Poritanism offers a firm basis for building up strong, solid and sincere character. I was forced to read and study the Bible constantly, and on this count also I acknow. ledge an immense debt to th beautiful and deeply human books which have been my classics.
But I am equally grateful that Twas able to make an early escape from Puritanism. Till I was 20 accepted, almost without question, the creed that I had been taught: I had never been what my co-18 called "converted," for no need in my nature for! crude and luscious spiritual experience. I kept a hard belief in the cast-iron dogmas that had been hammer-d into my head all through my childhood.
"The business T was engaged in allowed me long stretches of leisure, and I was a wide and dil went reader. Science and poetry Joved most, but I read a good deal of fiction." No thoughtful man 1 those years could avoid being drawn into the currents of controversy between the new pronouncements of science and orthodox Christianity.
T eagerly examined the arguments on both sides and was swayed towards Darwin, Huxley and Mill, T-carefully studied Her-herr Spencer's "Synthetic Philo-phy." It has largely influenced after thinking, Though philo-ophic thought has moved aside rom Herbert Spencer, he remains a clear, solid thinker' and a sure corrective to the wild, loose falla~ sies of Socialism,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.