The way of the spirit

BY H. RIDER HAGGARD AUTHOR OF “JESS,” “STELLA FREGELIUS,” ETC.
“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth…and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.” “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”
LONDON HUTCHINSON & CO. PATERNOSTER ROW 1906
Dedication
MY DEAR KIPLING,—Both of us believe that there are higher aims in life than the weaving of stories well or ill, and according to our separate occasions strive to fulfil this faith.
Still, when we talked together of the plan of this tale, and when you read the written book, your judgment thereof was such as all of us hope for from an honest and instructed friend—generally in vain.
So, as you found interest in it, I offer it to you, in token of much I cannot write. But you will understand.—
To Rudyard Kipling, Esq. Ditchingham, 14th August, 1905.
This tale was written two years ago as the result of reflections which occurred to me among the Egyptian sands and the empty cells of long-departed anchorites.
Perhaps in printing it I should ask forgiveness for my deviation from the familiar, trodden pathway of adventure, since in the course of a literary experience extending now, I regret to say, over more than a quarter of a century, often I have seen that he who attempts to step off the line chalked out for him by custom or opinion is apt to be driven back with stones and shoutings. Indeed, there are some who seem to think it very improper that an author should seek, however rarely, to address himself to a new line of thought or group of readers. As he began so he must go on, they say. Yet I have ventured on the history of Rupert Ullershaw’s great, and to all appearance successful Platonic experiment, chiefly because this problem interested me: Under the conditions in which fortune placed him in the East, was he right or wrong in clinging to an iron interpretation of a vow of his youth and to the strict letter of his Western Law? And was he bound to return to the English wife who had treated him so ill, as, in the end, he made up his mind to do? In short, should or should not circumstances be allowed to alter moral cases?