FROM A CORNISH WINDOW.
By
ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH.
1912
This etext prepared from a reprint of a version published in 1906.
DEDICATION.
MY DEAR WILLIAM ARCHER,
Severe and ruthlessly honest man that you are, you will find that the levities and the gravities of this book do not accord, and will say so.
I plead only that they were written at intervals, and in part for recreation, during years in which their author has striven to maintain a cheerful mind while a popular philosophy which he believed to be cheap took possession of men and translated itself into politics which he knew to be nasty. I may summarise it, in its own jargon, as the philosophy of the Superman, and succinctly describe it as an attempt to stretch a part of the Darwinian hypothesis and make it cover the whole of man's life and conduct. I need not remind you how fatally its doctrine has flattered, in our time and in our country, the worst instincts of the half-educated: but let us remove it from all spheres in which we are interested and contemplate it as expounded by an American Insurance 'Lobbyist,' a few days ago, before the Armstrong Committee:—