[21]. It is curious to note that Mr. Louis Stevenson, one of the most powerful of our imaginative writers, stated recently to a reporter that he is in the habit of constructing the plots of his tales in dreams, and among others that of Dr. Jekyll. “I dreamed,” he continued, “the story of ‘Olalla’ ... and I have at the present moment two unwritten stories which I have likewise dreamed.... Even when fast asleep I know that it is I who am inventing.”... But who knows whether the idea of “invention” is not also “a dream”!
[22]. The correspondence with reference to these “Comments” will be found in the Correspondence columns.
[23]. This is an esoteric tenet, and the general reader will not make much out of it. But the Theosophist who has read “Esoteric Buddhism” may compute the 7 by 7 of the forty-nine “days,” and the forty-nine “fires,” and understand that the allegory refers esoterically to the seven human consecutive root-races with their seven subdivisions. Every monad is born in the first and obtains deliverance in the last seventh race. Only a “Buddha” is shown reaching it during the course of one life.
[24]. Haeckel.
[25]. Leo Bach.
[26]. The sub-title, “a tale of love and magic,” having been simultaneously used by myself, Mr. Joseph Hutton, and another author, I think it best to change mine for one certainly less pretty, but equally descriptive. Is not this simultaneous use also a “sign of the times”?
[27]. Of whom there are large colonies along the Black Sea and the coast of Imeretia and Poti.
[28]. George Redway, 15, York Street, Covent Garden.
[29]. Copyrighted by Franz Hartmann, Boston Occult Publishing Co., 1887.
[30]. “What is Religion: A Vindication of Free Thought.” By C. N., annotated by Robert Lewins, M. D. See his Appendices, p. 35, et seq.