Excerpt from What Are We?: An Attempt at an Intelligible Exposition of the Universe and the Place We Take Therein

Evil is wrought by want of thought As well as want of heart.

I trust the generous reader will forgive my candour when I tell him that this work was drawn up on a rough frame to satisfy myself alone. Its writing was started for two purposes. Firstly, after manifold mental vicissitudes, I had arrived at a point which I con sidered to be the summit of one of the peaks in the region of thought, and I sought to describe what I saw in order the better to commit the same to memory; and in the second place, I endeavoured, by mapping out my former rambling thoughts on paper, to be the better able to cope with the many startling and perplexing controversies which at the present time are engaging alike the minds of theologian, scientist, philosopher, and the laity. Afterthoughts have convinced me that the goal I have reached, after many years' wandering, may be well worthy a visit from another than myself. Perchance some may stay there, very many more make it the starting-point for making travels of discovery into the vasts of conception.

This work must not, however, be considered as in any way exhaustive. It makes no pretension to the completeness of a pandect. It is the map of a continent, not of a country. No one point has been treated finitely to its logical conclusion, all details having been left for future occasions. On account of the complexity of the ways and the long distances traversed, reference has often had to be made to things already alluded to at a place nearer the starting-point, in order that, by each logical prominence en route, the other phases of the landscape left behind may remain fresh in the mind's eye, so as to obtain, on the part of the reader, a correct general idea of the entire journey.

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