WOOD AND STONE BOOKS BY JOHN COWPER POWYS THE WAR AND CULTURE, 1914 $ .60 VISIONS AND REVISIONS, 1915 $2.00 PUBLISHED BY G. ARNOLD SHAW GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, NEW YORK WOOD AND STONE A ROMANCE BY JOHN COWPER POWYS Licuit, semperque licebit Parcere personis, dicere de vitiis. [Illustration] 1915 G. ARNOLD SHAW NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1915 BY G. ARNOLD SHAW COPYRIGHT IN GREAT BRITAIN AND COLONIES DEDICATED WITH DEVOTED ADMIRATION TO THE GREATEST POET AND NOVELIST OF OUR AGE THOMAS HARDY PREFACE The following narrative gathers itself round what is, perhaps, one of the most absorbing and difficult problems of our age; the problem namely of getting to the bottom of that world-old struggle between the “well-constituted” and the “ill-constituted,” which the writings of Nietzsche have recently called so startlingly to our attention. Is there such a thing at all as Nietzsche’s born and trained aristocracy? In other words, is the secret of the universe to be reached only along the lines of Power, Courage, and Pride? Or,--on the contrary,--is the hidden and basic law of things, not Power but Sacrifice, not Pride but Love? Granting, for the moment, that this latter alternative is the true one, what becomes of the drastic distinction between “well-constituted” and “ill-constituted”? In a universe whose secret is not self-assertion, but self-abandonment, might not the “well-constituted” be regarded as the vanquished, and the “ill-constituted” as the victors? In other words, who, in such a universe, _are_ the “well-constituted”? But the difficulty does not end here. Supposing we rule out of our calculation both of these antipodal possibilities,--both the universe whose inner fatality is the striving towards Power, and the universe whose inner fatality is the striving towards Love,--will there not be found to remain two other rational hypotheses, either, namely, that there is no inner fatality about it at all, that the whole thing is a blind, fantastic, chance-drifting chaos; or that the true secret lies in some subtle and difficult reconciliation, between the will to Power and the will to Love?