Theism and Humanism / Being the Gifford Lectures Delivered at the University of Glasgow, 1914

Transcriber’s Notes
The cover was created by adding text to a plain background and is placed in the public domain.
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
THEISM AND HUMANISM
BEING THE GIFFORD LECTURES Delivered at the University of Glasgow, 1914
BY THE Rt. Hon. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR M.A., F.R.S., LL.D., D.C.L. (HON. FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE)
HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDONNEW YORK TORONTO MCMXV
Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld. London and Aylesbury.
TO THE PROFESSORS AND STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, WHO GAVE SO KIND A RECEPTION TO THESE LECTURES ON THEIR DELIVERY IN THE BUTE HALL, I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME.
This volume contains the substance of the Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Glasgow in January and February 1914. I say the substance of the lectures, lest any of those who formed part of my most kindly audience should expect a verbal reproduction of what they then heard. No such reproduction would have been either expedient or possible. The lectures were not read: they were spoken (with the aid of brief notes) in such terms as suggested themselves at the moment; and their duration was rigidly fixed, to suit my academic audience, so as just to occupy the customary hour. Although, therefore, they were largely (though not wholly) based upon written drafts, none of the language, and not all the ideas and illustrations contained in the original could be reproduced in the spoken lectures, nor did everything in the spoken lectures represent passages in the written originals.
It is not, in these circumstances, surprising that the work has had, in large measure, to be rewritten, though the argument itself, and the order in which its various parts are presented for consideration, remains substantially unchanged.
I should not have troubled the reader with this very unimportant narrative except for the purpose of explaining the long interval that has elapsed between the delivery of the lectures and their publication. Literary composition I have always found laborious and slow, even in favourable conditions. But the conditions have not been favourable. My anxiety to make the argument easy to read for persons who take little interest in, and have small knowledge of, philosophical controversies did not make it easy to write; while external circumstances were singularly unfavourable to rapid composition. No one who took any part in public affairs between March 1914 and the outbreak of the war, or between the outbreak of the war and the present moment, is likely to regard these months as providing convenient occasion for quiet thought and careful writing. I say this, however, not as an excuse for poor workmanship, but only as an explanation of long delay.