So I am confirmed in my design to declare what seems to me to be wrong with our life. I choose the form of a direct challenge of old traditions mainly because they so oppress and benumb the public mind that new ideals do not get a fair consideration. But it will be found that behind the series of challenges there is a series of affirmations, and these make up a constructive ideal of life. Probably few will accept this ideal in its entirety, though each chapter advocates a reform which has millions of adherents. It is, however, not based on any 'ism, least of all on dogmatism. There is a view of, or attitude toward, life expounded in the first chapter, and behind each particular claim. But each section deals with a specific department of life and must find its justification within the limits of that department. If any regret that the work does not embody a profound philosophy of life, I must reply that I passed through philosophy thirty years ago, and came out into science and history in search of reality: and that philosophers do not seem to me to be either agreed among themselves or in any close relationship to the human problems I discuss. Many will advise me, too, that a man would do well to conceal the more offensive of his heresies, in order to gain a more patient hearing for the others. That is the usual and prudent practice, no doubt; but this book has been written in a mood of fiery impatience with untruth, and this has forbidden compromise. Night by night, as I sit on the deck of the ship, I watch the dark purple pall drop swiftly over the last flush of the tropical sky; and I know that, each night, it shrouds the faces of thousands of men, women, and children whose chance of happiness is gone for ever. We are arguing to-day about man's ailments just as the Greeks were arguing in the Agora at Athens two thousand years ago, or as men argued in the garden of Plato or of Epicurus. Meantime almost countless millions have lived in pain and squalor, and died in delusive hope, under the curse of those ancient traditions which we will not discard. Therefore I am impatient: I cannot sit in quiet enjoyment of the sunshine that is granted me. It will be found that no man appraises more highly than I the advance we have made in modern times, and that I nowhere exaggerate the darker features of life. If at times I write fiercely, cynically, even bitterly, it is not from pessimism, but from fulness and fire of optimism. My controlling thought is, as I said, a consciousness of our power.