As it is supposed, that Cleomenes is my friend, and speaks my sentiments, so it is but justice, that every thing which he advances should be looked upon and considered as my own; but no man in his senses would think, that I ought to be equally responsible for every thing that Horatio says, who is his antagonist. If ever he offers any thing that favours of libertinism, or is otherwise exceptionable, which Cleomenes does not reprove him for in the best and most serious manner, or to which he gives not the most satisfactory and convincing answer that can be made, I am to blame, otherwise not. Yet from the fate the first part has met with, I expect to see in a little time several things transcribed and cited from this, in that manner, by themselves, without the replies that are made to them, and so shown to the world, as my words and my opinion. The opportunity of doing this will be greater in this part than it was in the former, and should I always have fair play, and never be attacked, but by such adversaries, as would make their quotations from me without artifice, and use me with common honesty, it would go a great way to the refuting of me; and I should myself begin to suspect the truth of several things I have advanced, and which hitherto I cannot help believing. A stroke made in this manner,----which the reader will sometimes meet with in the following dialogues, is a sign, either of interruption, when the person speaking is not suffered to go on with what he was going to say, or else of a pause, during which something is supposed to be said or done, not relating to the discourse. As in this part I have not altered the subject, on which a former, known by the name of the Fable of the Bees, was wrote; and the same unbiassed method of searching after truth, and inquiring into the nature of man and society, made use of in that, is continued in this, I thought it unnecessary to look out for another title; and being myself a great lover of simplicity, and my invention none of the most fruitful, the reader, I hope, will pardon the bald, inelegant aspect, and unusual emptiness of the title page. Here I would have made an end of my Preface, which I know very well is too long already: but the world having been very grossly imposed upon by a false report, that some months ago was very solemnly made, and as industriously spread in most of the newspapers, for a considerable time, I think it would be an unpardonable neglect in me, of the public, should I suffer them; to remain in the error they were led into, when I am actually addressing them; and there is no other person, from whom they can so justly expect to be undeceived. In the London Evening Post of Saturday March 9, 1727-8, the following paragraph was printed in small Italic, at the end of the home news.