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The good old custom of the author telling his readers in a preface why he wrote his book, happily has not yet gone out of date.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 readersas 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.Myanswer. 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.”
To each of us things are what they appear from each particular point of view. Our idea is our limitation.
He who writes a book presents to other minds a picture of life as it appears to him, from whatever point of view he has chosen. His work portrays both that which he sees outside himself and that which is within. It is a combination of himself and the world as he sees it, for of subject and object are all things made.
When we read a tale it is the author we learn to know, rather than his people; but we know him through his people. They are the dwellers within his mind, and we cannot know them without entering that realm and knowing it, be it enchanted or disenchanting.
Sight and insight make up all literature. Every book is a combination of the author and what he looks upon and studies objectively as well as subjectively. It is truth as he sees it.
I have read many interesting works of fiction; but for the most part I laid them down dissatisfied. They lacked something for which I was always searching. They gave no answer to the questions that early began to trouble me—questions that nobody could answer and few cared to be bothered with. Often they were very attractive pictures of that which the world is to so many—a fool’s paradise.
They dealt with the emotions of those whose lives they portrayed, and they appealed to the emotions of those who read them; and all had ever the one, one theme—the pursuit of happiness.And all pursuers saw the alluring phantom in the same shape, and gave chase to it by the same road. Sometimes they captured it, and then—the book ended. There was nothing else for the author to do when he reached that point, but to let the curtain drop and turn out the lights, lest his audience see that the happiness so hotly pursued was not the true thing after all; but only an appearance, an illusion, a disappointment, as veritable a phantom as ever—which left the one in possession of it no better off than he was before he captured it.
Now the form of this phantom, was the love of the man and the woman for each other, and the possession of each by the other. Romances have been mostly amplified sex chases. They wrought upon the reader’s emotions through many harrowing chapters, the end thereof being that a certain man married the particular woman he was pursuing.
An old man whom I knew in my youth said he only read the first and last chapters of a novel. In the one he became acquainted with the hero and heroine; in the other he found out “whether he got her or not.” By so doing he escaped much emotional wear and tear to which less discriminating readers subjected themselves. As we all know, sometimes “he didn’t get her.” What then? Well, perhaps she died or he died, and that ended the story. Everybody acceptedthat event as final and incontestable. That was the end, and nobody ventured to ask what lay behind it. It was the end of the successful as well as of the disappointed—the end of everybody in the world, yet nobody sought its meaning.
In this respect the people outside of books were precisely like the people in books. They had the same ideal of happiness, chased it through the same difficulties and disasters, and would not admit that it was a phantom; would not see that Death stalked behind every joy, sat at every feast, touched elbows right and left with the victorious as well as with the defeated, and waited for everybody under the sun. They knew it, of course, but they did not want to think about it or talk about it.
And what was this spectre to which all closed their eyes because of terror? Death was death. That was all they knew. It was the terrible and final thing that could happen. More; it was sure to happen; but it must be put off as long as possible and ignored in the meantime.
To me it ever was incomprehensible that so dreadful an issue was so hopelessly accepted and so little inquired into.
I pondered much on this strange problem. The dream haunted my mind that somewhere there was a solution.
I sought it everywhere from men and books; but long without success. At last a ray of lightfell upon my path. Faithfully following it through years of earnest inquiry I learned that Death is not death. With that knowledge happiness took a new form and beckoned to me over a new road.
Because of the new ideals it placed before me I wrote this book. Its people are my people; its gospel my gospel. From the truth as I was led to see it I found a reason for my own being as well as for that of the book, and I have tried to give it to the reader as simply as it came to me.
The psychical phenomena described are not exaggerated. Most of it came within my own experience, and would be accessible to any one who devoted to the study as much patience, time and effort as I did.
There will be those who will give to the book only the sneer of conceited ignorance. For such I have no message. With them, the first condition of all learning—receptively—is lacking. I make no argument. I try to convince no one. I simply tell a story. It will bear its own message to those ready to receive it. None else can understand. God Himself cannot give us what we will not receive.
The book is but a finger that aims to point out to others a moon that made glorious light for me. And if you will patiently look in the direction it points, you, too, will see the shining moon.
The Author.