Since this may be the last book of the kind I shall ever publish, I have written into it as well as I can the heretical metaphysical skepticism upon which all my thinking rests, and I have inserted certain sections reflecting upon the established methods of sociological and economic science. . . . The last four words will not attract the butterfly reader, I know. I have done my best to make the whole of this book as lucid and entertaining as its matter permits, because I want it read by as many people as possible, but I do not promise anything but rage and confusion to him who proposes to glance through my pages just to see if I agree with him, or to begin in the middle, or to read without a constantly alert attention. If you are not already a little interested and open-minded with regard to social and political questions, and a little exercised in self-examination, you will find neither interest nor pleasure here. If your mind is "made up" upon such issues your time will be wasted on these pages. And even if you are a willing reader you may require a little patience for the peculiar method I have this time adopted. That method assumes an air of haphazard, but it is not so careless as it seems. I believe it to be -- even now that I am through with the book -- the best way to a sort of lucid vagueness which has always been my intention in this matter.