upon the title-page of a book by me, the reader who cares for truth
and righteousness may take it for granted that the book represents
my own original thinking, whether good or bad, on some important
point in human society or human evolution.

Not, again, that any one of these novels will deliberately attempt
to PROVE anything. I have been amused at the allegations brought
by certain critics against The Woman who Did that it "failed to
prove" the practicability of unions such as Herminia's and Alan's.
The famous Scotsman, in the same spirit, objected to Paradise Lost
that it "proved naething": but his criticism has not been generally
endorsed as valid. To say the truth, it is absurd to suppose a
work of imagination can prove or disprove anything. The author
holds the strings of all his puppets, and can pull them as he
likes, for good or evil: he can make his experiments turn out well
or ill: he can contrive that his unions should end happily or
miserably: how, then, can his story be said to PROVE anything? A
novel is not a proposition in Euclid. I give due notice beforehand
to reviewers in general, that if any principle at all is "proved"
by any of my Hill-top Novels, it will be simply this: "Act as I
think right, for the highest good of human kind, and you will
infallibly and inevitably come to a bad end for it."

Not to prove anything, but to suggest ideas, to arouse emotions,
is, I take it, the true function of fiction. One wishes to make
one's readers THINK about problems they have never considered, FEEL
with sentiments they have disliked or hated. The novelist as
prophet has his duty defined for him in those divine words of
Shelley's: