In this book there lie only the germs of a world-scheme, and these are allied most closely with the conceptions of Plato, Kant and Christianity. I have been compelled for the most part to fashion for myself the scientific, psychological, philosophical, logical, ethical groundwork. I think that at the least I have laid the foundations of many things into which I could not go fully. I call special attention to the defects of this part of my work because I attach more importance to appreciation of what I have tried to say about the deepest and most general problems than to the interest which will certainly be aroused by my special investigation of the problem of woman. The philosophical reader may take it amiss to find a treatment of the loftiest and ultimate problems coinciding with the investigation of a special problem of no great dignity; I share with him this distaste. I may say, however, that I have treated throughout the contrast between the sexes as the starting-point rather than the goal of my research. The investigation has yielded a harvest rich in its bearing on the fundamental problems of logic and their relations to the axioms of thought, on the theory of æsthetics, of love, and of the beautiful and the good, and on problems such as individuality and morality and their relations, on the phenomena of genius, the craving for immortality and Hebraism. Naturally these comprehensive interrelations aid the special problem, for, as it is considered from so many points of view, its scope enlarges. And if in this wider sense it be proved that culture can give only the smallest hope for the nature of woman, if the final results are a depreciation, even a negation of womanhood, there will be no attempt in this to destroy what exists, to humble what has a value of its own. Horror of my own deed would overtake me were I here only destructive and had I left only a clean sheet. Perhaps the affirmations in my book are less articulate, but he that has ears to hear will hear them.