"Nach ewigen, ehrnen, Grossen Gesetzen Müssen wir alle Unseres Daseins Kreise vollenden. Nur allein der Mensch Vermag das Unmögliche; Wählet und richtet; Er kann dem Augenblick Dauer verleihen. Er allein darf Den Guten lohnen, Den Bösen strafen, Heilen und retten; Alles Irrende, Schweifende Nützlich verbinden." --GOETHE, "Das Göttliche." MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS AND OTHER ESSAYS BY A. SETH PRINGLE-PATTISON, LL.D. PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY OF SECOND Edition, REVISED AND ENLARGED NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE 1902 All Rights reserved PREFACE. THE title of this volume may seem disproportioned to its contents. A systematic discussion of "man's place in the cosmos" would obviously involve the whole range of science and of metaphysics. These essays make no pretence to be such a discussion. Nevertheless it is not unadvisedly that the title of the first paper has been extended to the volume as a whole, and thus used to indicate the general character of its contents. The papers of which it is composed were written within the last six years, and are, in the first instance,, a, criticism of some of the more significant contributions to philosophy which have appeared during that period. They cannot, d. They cannot, therefore, be taken as a series, in which there is a systematic progress from the earlier essays to those which follow. But it will be found that they are all, at bottom, treatments of the same theme-man's relation to the forces of nature and to the absolute ground of things, or, in the words of the title, man's place in the cosmos. The books or pamphlets criticised were originally selected for |