DEDICATED
to
Those who are wise enough
to be foolish—at intervals
PRELUDE.
Mother Nature contributes the elements and qualities and “temperament” of the individual; and no matter what the education, occupation, position or experience, those native tendencies persist.
One who is born with the disposition for mental frivoling and a keen sense of nonsense discovers that these tendencies persist with far greater tenacity than any impulses of anger or fear or other destructive elements. The writer of this little book has found them subordinate only to the thirst for knowledge and the love of truth.
When the author of this “romance” finally renounced the small gods of her personal ambitions, and surrendered the diverting occupation of newspaper work for serious instruction in the School of Natural Science, she merely restrained but never eliminated that Sense of Nonsense. The native tendency toward intellectual badinage and literary travesty persisted—and even to the present time it furnishes relaxation from the absorbing duties in connection with The Great Work.
Science, if it be Science, must take into account all of the facts of Human Nature; and Philosophy, if it be Philosophy, must include and assign to place every intellectual, native and normal tendency of the Soul.
Science and Philosophy that have no room for the incongruities of life and the frivolings of the intelligence are only partial mentors and masters.
The workshop occupies so much of life, thought and energy, that no one should refuse an occasional hour in the play room.
Confidence in the good sense of the readers of the Harmonic Series forbids the thought that this little satire should be mistaken for a reflection upon the Verities of the School of Natural Science, or that it could be so misinterpreted as to discredit the Harmonic Philosophy.