ENIGMAS OF LIFE. By W. R. GREG. "The Soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made." JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, PREFACE. THE following pages contain rather suggested thoughts that may fructify in other minds than distinct propositions which it is sought argumentatively to prove. In the later years of life the intellectual vision, if often clearer, usually grows less confident and enterprising. Age is content to think, where Youth would have been anxious to demonstrate and establish; and problems and enigmas which, at thirty, I fancied I might be able to solve, I find, at sixty, I must be satisfied simply to propound. By the severer class of scientific reasoners (if I have any such among my readers), it will, I am aware, be noted with disapproval that throughout this little book there runs an undercurrent of belief in two great doctrines, which yet I do not make the slightest attempt to prove. I have everywhere, it will be said, assumed the existence of a Creator and of a continued life beyond the grave, though I give no reason for my faith in either; though I obviously do not hold those points of the Christian creed on the ordinary Christian grounds; and though I cannot fail to be conscious that these questions underlie, or inextricably mingle with nearly |