  Ward made the best out of the difficult challenge of beginning a new life at the age of thirty. In 1874 he obtained a first in his Tripos; one year later, he won a fellowship with a dissertation entitled ‘The Relation of Physiology to Psychology,’ part of which was published in the first issue of Mind in 1876. These successes marked the beginning of a distinguished career. He first became known for his article on ‘Psychology’ (1886) in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in which he criticised Mill and Bain’s associationism, and in the years 1896–98 he delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures, later published under the title Naturalism and Agnosticism (1899). In this book, Ward attacked the various forms of scientific materialism that were current in the second half of the nineteenth century. The lectures were well received by his contemporaries and there was a widespread agreement that Ward had been effective in his refutation. According to Alfred Edward Taylor, who reviewed the book in Mind in 1900, “one may assert without much fear of contradiction that Prof. Ward’s Gifford Lectures are the philosophical book of the last year” (Taylor 1900: 244).