CONTENTS.
PREFACE.
The good old custom of the author telling his readers in a preface why he wrote his book, happily has not yet gone out of date. Though no particular friend to guide-board literature in general, I confess to a weakness for the preface. It has its helpful uses. There the author can talk directly to his readers, without filtering his thoughts through the brains of his characters; and in consequence the readers come into closer sympathy with him and understand him better. In not a few cases I have wished books were all preface. I hope others may not wish so in this case.
In the preface we meet the author face to face, as it were, and he becomes ours or we become his at once. It is a little confidential glimpse into his soul, which he kindly gives us before we enter it by means of the book.
Yes, I am decidedly in favor of the preface, both as reader and author.
A time-honored method of prefatory writing, made the author assume a modesty that was self-depreciatory in the extreme. More often than not he warned readers off by throwing out hints disparaging his own ability. To such few readers as he thought might follow him through the book in spite of his assurance that it would be unprofitable to do so, he apologized with the utmost humility for the waste of their time and drain upon their patience for which he was about to be responsible.
I shall do no such thing. On the contrary, I believe that he who reads this book will not find his time ill spent. Its theme is the most important that can engage the human race. It is my answer to the mightiest question ever propounded. My answer. Its value extends that far and no farther. “It is only insight into the ground of being that secures satisfaction and thorough knowledge.” My light may be only a rush-light; but such as it is I obey the behest to let it shine.
Says one of the greatest of modern philosophers: “If anything in the world is worth wishing for—so well worth wishing for that even the ignorant and dull herd in its more reflective moments would prize it more than silver or gold—it is that a ray of light should fall on the obscurity of our being, and that we should gain some explanation of our mysterious existence, in which nothing is clear but its misery and its vanity.”