I should not like to say that my having led the way, in the spring of 1914, for writers of dignified reputation to publish their automatic writings might have been causally directed by the coming great need of the world for spiritual consolation during the most awful holocaust in history. That would be pressing irrationality too far. But that second line of life, as Jung would call it, came to its inevitable end with the last of this manuscript in February, 1918. The cause of that was also seemingly accidental. But as this Introduction is only an introduction, it is impossible to follow the course of all the drops of water in the broad river that has flowed under my mental bridges during the last fourteen months. My present line of life (and through the analysis of my dreams I have means of knowing what it is) points to the resumption of my original literary work, poetry, fiction and essays, and to the exclusion, so far as possible, of everything that would deflect me from that course. “Accidentality” will cut in from time to time, change of place and therefore change of outlook, studies of all sorts, and legitimate demands by that society of which I form a part; but I have done enough automatic writing. Others will do it, if it must be done; and probably it must--because it is an outlet which it might be unsafe to stop up in the present state of the race consciousness. Of course if I should feel strongly impelled to do automatic writing, I should do it, trusting to that destiny which is another name for causes beyond our comprehension; but it was the strength of my “inner protest” that made me realize that I had gone far enough along that line. As in the forewords to the former books, I state the psychological situation of the moment, saying, “so and so happened.” The reader, as before, will interpret in his own way. This introduction indicates my point of view in the month of April, 1919. Before the month of May, 2019, I shall have solved the problem of survival, or demonstrated (without knowing it) that it is insoluble. The more we know about all these things, the less likely we are to assume that we have the sum of all knowledge. We are like children, groping among psychological lights and shadows. My own belief in immortality seems ineradicable. I did not know that until it was tested out. But we must always remember that our personal belief is not absolute evidence of the truth of what we believe--at least until we shall have examined all the psychological roots of the belief, and in the present state of our knowledge that is well-nigh impossible. Our rational belief, if we have formed one for ourselves and have not merely accepted uncritically the beliefs of our predecessors and associates, is merely our individual synthesis. But we must not give an exaggerated value even to our own hard-won synthesis. That also is a moving, an ever-changing, thing. Otherwise we should not grow. When a man becomes fixed he begins to disintegrate.