The work now produced is based on scientific principles; but it is
an essay rather than a scientific treatise, and even good-natured
critics will, no doubt, pronounce it an article or a series of
articles designed for a review, rather than a book. It is hard to
overcome the habits of a lifetime. I have taken some pains to
exchange the reviewer for the author, but am fully conscious that
I have not succeeded. My work can lay claim to very little
artistic merit. It is full of repetitions; the same thought is
frequently recurring,--the result, to some extent, no doubt, of
carelessness and the want of artistic skill; but to a greater
extent, I fear, of "malice aforethought." In composing my work I
have followed, rather than directed, the course of my thought,
and, having very little confidence in the memory or industry of
readers, I have preferred, when the completeness of the argument
required it, to repeat myself to encumbering my pages with
perpetual references to what has gone before.

That I attach some value to this work is evident from my consenting
to its publication; but how much or how little of it is really
mine, I am quite unable to say. I have, from my youth up, been
reading, observing, thinking, reflecting, talking, I had almost
said writing, at least by fits and starts, on political subjects,
especially in their connection with philosophy, theology, history,
and social progress, and have assimilated to my own mind what it
would assimilate, without keeping any notes of the sources whence
the materials assimilated were derived. I have written freely
from my own mind as I find it now formed; but how it has been so
formed, or whence I have borrowed, my readers know as well as I.
All that is valuable in the thoughts set forth, it is safe to assume
has been appropriated from others. Where I have been distinctly