Since that time new editions have succeeded one another every year. I have had to answer many hundreds of letters (often very badly and briefly) which made me see that I had friends among my readers. At last I was asked, both in France and abroad, to explain the ideas which are the foundation of my work. So, although my novel only aims at increasing the will and the courage to live and not at establishing any doctrine, I was induced to speak about our various modern attitudes towards life. After my addresses I was honored by a request to put them into print. I have gathered together here the notes which helped me to prepare them. If after four years I feel some pride in recording the prolonged influence of a work whose art is perfectly natural and sincere, I must thank for it all those unknown friends who contributed to the result by their infectious sympathy. I The fear of living is a disease which extends its ravages principally to old civilisations like our own. The symptoms of this moral phthisis may be outwardly contradictory; for there are two ways of being afraid to live as there are two kinds of selfishness. The first, the most frequent to-day and the most cowardly, has already been denounced by Dante, who in the third Canto of the _Inferno_, brands it with the red-hot iron of his scorn. Guided by Virgil, the poet arrives at the gate of the City of Tears. He has not yet entered the door when he hears, rising up to him from the bottom of the abyss, groans, shrieks and cries of despair, which resound under a starless sky. From what lips do these sounds proceed, these sounds which come from near Hell, but not from Hell itself? Dante in his distress asks his master for an explanation. “Master,” I said, “what do I hear, and what is this crowd which seems so crushed by sorrow?” And he said: “This is the miserable fate of the sad souls of all those who have lived without blame and without praise. They are mingled with that dread chorus of angels who were neither faithful to God, nor rebellious, but who existed for themselves only. They have been banished from Heaven, because they spoiled its beauty, and the depths of Hell would not receive them because the damned would gain some glory by their presence.” And I said: “Master, what is the torment that is crushing them and makes them weep so bitterly?” He answered me: “I will tell you briefly. They have no hope of dying, and their dark life is so vile that they are envious of every other fate. The world has no memory of them, and mercy and justice despise them. Do not speak of them; look and pass on....”