had shaped out at last a certain personal certitude, upon which I
feel I shall go for the rest of my days. In this present book I have
tried to settle accounts with a number of issues left over or opened
up by its two predecessors, to correct them in some particulars, and
to give the general picture of a Utopia that has grown up in my mind
during the course of these speculations as a state of affairs at
once possible and more desirable than the world in which I live. But
this book has brought me back to imaginative writing again. In its
two predecessors the treatment of social organisation had been
purely objective; here my intention has been a little wider and
deeper, in that I have tried to present not simply an ideal, but an
ideal in reaction with two personalities. Moreover, 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 scepticism 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