viii PREFACE 



an English child is taken from his mother's breast, 

 and brought up without any intercourse with his 

 kind, we shall never know precisely in what respect 

 he differs at birth, morally, from a little Hottentot. 

 But the presumption in favour of the heredity of 

 sentiment is overwhelmingly great, even in the case 

 of sentiment which has been accumulated within a 

 fewer number of generations than Weismann assigns 

 to the continuity of his Keimplasma. 



As regards the method in which the question of 

 psychological evolution is treated in the following 

 pages, objection may be taken to the frequent allusions 

 made to works of fiction. No doubt the evidence 

 furnished from this source as to prevailing currents 

 of sentiment at a given period is inexact and un- 

 scientific. But psychology is as difficult to discuss 

 as questions of taste, and an inquirer into the history 

 of popular sentiment, be he as painstaking as he may, 

 can only hope to arrive approximately at the truth. 

 The drama is perhaps after all a more faithful reflex 

 of the popular sentiment of a period than the pages 

 of history; for while the historian may interpret events 

 in the light of preconceptions and prejudices of his 

 own, the dramatist is bound to study and to conform to 

 the feelings of an audience of his contemporaries. The 



