ABSTRACT
My interest in philosophy is not due to any professional incentive and is not the result of any definite choice in connexion with vocation or inclination. My father, when I was five years old (I am the eldest of a large family), gave up his membership of the Stock Exchange, where he was engaged in a moderately remunerative business, in order to become the minister of a chapel of the Baptist denomination. He was well educated for his position. He had been an ordinary schoolboy at the Merchant Taylors’ School, and when he left school to become a clerk in an office, he had spent his leisure in attending such evening courses as were then available and more especially in the mutual improvement societies which were encouraged by the religious denominations. He felt he had a call to the ministry and obeyed it. He was not unsuccessful as a preacher, but he found his family increasing, and ways and means becoming urgent. When I was eleven years old, he retired from his pastorate and returned to London to his former business. From that time and to the end of his life he was closely associated with his friend C. H. Spurgeon, the famous preacher. I learned from my father to feel the strong attraction which Calvinism has for a mind religiously inclined and logically disciplined. I think in this my experience is singular, for I find that most of those whom I know who have been brought up under Calvinist influence have strongly reacted against it. My father had a large library consisting almost entirely of the works of Puritan theologians and it was my delight. Before I was sixteen I had experienced conversion along much the same lines as are described by St. Augustine in the “Confessions.” and I was duly baptized and received into the congregation, or rather, as we were taught to say, into the Church. Shortly before, I had left the Stationers’ Company’s School, then housed in Bolt Court, Fleet Street, Dr. Johnson’s locality. I had reached the position of head boy, and had obtained a scholarship. Our circumstances, however, made the idea of proceeding to the University quite impossible, and I became a clerk in the City, at first in an accountant’s office, and then with a Stock Exchange firm. As soon as I was settled in my business occupation I joined the evening classes department of King’s College, matriculating as a student and proud of the privilege of wearing, when my work in the City was done, the college cap and gown. I continued the study of Latin, Greek and German, but my chief interest was science. It was, however, to the Rev. E. P. Scrymgour, then lecturer on English Literature, that I owed my first acquaintance with philosophy proper. I recollect the kind of dismay and awe with which I saw the vista opened of that new interest, the great historical development of philosophical speculation. When my course was completed and I received the Associateship of King’s College, I was awarded the Cunningham prize, given to the Associate of the year with the highest marks for his whole period. I was allowed by the donor to choose my prize and I selected Professor Fraser’s edition of Berkeley. I read it through. It was my first real introduction to philosophy.
