express abstract thoughts in argumentative prose, whatever emotion those
thoughts awaken I have not felt myself able adequately to express except in
the other form. (The allegory "Three Dreams in a Desert" which I published
about nineteen years ago was taken from this book; and I have felt that
perhaps being taken from its context it was not quite clear to every one.)
I had also tried throughout to illustrate the subject with exactly those
particular facts in the animal and human world, with which I had come into
personal contact and which had helped to form the conclusions which were
given; as it has always seemed to me that in dealing with sociological
questions a knowledge of the exact manner in which any writer has arrived
at his view is necessary in measuring its worth. The work had occupied a
large part of my life, and I had hoped, whatever its deficiencies, that it
might at least stimulate other minds, perhaps more happily situated, to an
enlarged study of the question.

In 1899 I was living in Johannesburg, when, owing to ill-health, I was
ordered suddenly to spend some time at a lower level. At the end of two
months the Boer War broke out. Two days after war was proclaimed I arrived
at De Aar on my way back to the Transvaal; but Martial Law had already been
proclaimed there, and the military authorities refused to allow my return
to my home in Johannesburg and sent me to the Colony; nor was I allowed to
send any communication through, to any person, who might have extended some
care over my possessions. Some eight months after, when the British troops
had taken and entered Johannesburg; a friend, who, being on the British
side, had been allowed to go up, wrote me that he had visited my house and
found it looted, that all that was of value had been taken or destroyed;
that my desk had been forced open and broken up, and its contents set on
fire in the centre of the room, so that the roof was blackened over the
pile of burnt papers. He added that there was little in the remnants of
paper of which I could make any use, but that he had gathered and stored