only attain his object in proportion as the wonders he narrates are of a
kind to excite the curiosity of the age he addresses.

In the brains of our time, the faculty of Causation is very markedly
developed. People nowadays do not delight in the Marvellous according
to the old childlike spirit. They say in one breath, "Very extraordinary!"
and in the next breath ask, "How do you account for it?" If the Author of
this work has presumed to borrow from science some elements of interest for
Romance, he ventures to hope that no thoughtful reader--and certainly no
true son of science--will be disposed to reproach him. In fact, such
illustrations from the masters of Thought were essential to the
completion of the purpose which pervades the work.

That purpose, I trust, will develop itself in proportion as the story
approaches the close; and whatever may appear violent or melodramatic in
the catastrophe, will, perhaps, be found, by a reader capable
of perceiving the various symbolical meanings conveyed in the story,
essential to the end in which those meanings converge, and towards
which the incidents that give them the character and interest of
of fiction, have been planned and directed from the commencement.

Of course, according to the most obvious principles of art, the
narrator of a fiction must be as thoroughly in earnest as if he were
the narrator of facts. One could not tell the most extravagant
fairy-tale so as to rouse and sustain the attention of the most
infantine listener, if the tale were told as if the taleteller did not
believe in it. But when the reader lays down this "Strange Story,"
perhaps he will detect, through all the haze of romance, the outlines of
these images suggested to his reason: Firstly, the image of sensuous,
soulless Nature, such as the Materialist had conceived it; secondly, the