IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS

BY

HAVELOCK ELLIS



PREFACE

For many years I have been accustomed to make notes on random leaves of
the things in Life and Thought which have chanced to strike my attention.
Such records of personal reaction to the outer and inner world have been
helpful to my work, and so had their uses.

But as one grows older the possibilities of these uses become more
limited. One realises in the Autumn that leaves no longer have a vital
function to perform; there is no longer any need why they should cling to
the tree. So let them be scattered to the winds!

It is inevitable that such Leaves cannot be judged in the same way as
though they constituted a Book. They are much more like loose pages from a
Journal. Thus they tend to be more personal, more idiosyncratic, than in a
book it would be lawful for a writer to be. Often, also, they show blanks
which the intelligence of the reader must fill in. At the best they merely
present the aspect of the moment, the flash of a single facet of life,
only to be held in the brain provided one also holds therein many other
facets, for the fair presentation of the great crystal of life. So it
comes about that much is here demanded of the Reader, so much that I feel
it rather my duty to warn him away than to hold out any fallacious lures.