Personally, I am more interested in the abnormalities, which I find very fascinating. And I am very eager to know whether they will prove to be the result of the abnormal conditions of life which Modern Man has created for himself in his tampering with the forces of nature,--his strenuous industrial existence, his turning of night into day, his whirling himself over the world at a pace not at all in conformity with his native powers of locomotion, and other matters in accordance. Or will they prove to be the revenge of the dammed up, cribbed, cabined, and confined imagination, which can no longer exert itself upon externals,--since the Investigating Man has explained and mastered these or is doing so--and now turns in to wreak frightful wreck upon the mind itself? At any rate, the fact is that we have some very curious appearances in the Mirror just now; madmen explaining their own madness, diseased men picking apart their own diseases, perverted men analyzing their own perversions, anything, everything but sane and normal men. Does it mean that in our day there is nothing interesting in good health, in well-ordered lives? Or does it mean that the rarest thing in all the world is the so-called normal man, whom tacit consent assumes to be the commonest? That everybody, while outwardly wearing a mask of reputable common sense, is within a raging conglomeration of psychic elements that hurl themselves on one another like hissing flames? Or does it mean simply that the most powerful writers are themselves diseased, and can only paint disease? I put these questions and do not presume to answer them. I point to the mirror,--the Ibsen Drama, the Andreyev Story, the Maeterlinck Poem, the Artzibashev novel,--and I say the image is there. Explain it as you can. For the rest, let me recall to you what I told you was my intent: First: To insist on a more inclusive view of Literature; you see I would have it extended both up and down,--_down_ even to the advertisement, the sporting page, and the surreptitious anecdote,--_up_ to the fullest and most comprehensive statements of the works of reason. Second: To suggest that readers acquire the habit of reading twice, or at least with a double intent. When serious literature is to be considered, I would insist on actually reading twice; but of course it would be both impractical and undesirable to apply such a method to most of the print we look at.