The principal philosophical influences of my undergraduate years were: 1. The really very great and deep effect produced upon me by the teaching of Professor Joseph LeConte, — himself a former pupil of Agassiz, a geologist, a comparatively early defender and exponent of the Darwinian theory, and a great light in the firmament of the University of California of those days; 2. The personal influence of Edward Rowland Sill, who was my teacher in English, during the last two years of my undergraduate life; 3. The literary influence of John Stuart Mill and of Herbert Spencer, both of whom I read during those years. There was, at that time, no regular undergraduate course in philosophy at the University of California.
After graduation I studied in Germany, and later at the Johns Hopkins University, still later returning a while to the University of California from 1878 to 1882. Since 1882 I have been working at Harvard. In Germany I heard Lotze at Göttingen, and was for a while strongly under his influence.
