vi PREFACE. 



drawn, The Study of Sociology may properly be included as 

 a component, as also may be eight essays directly or indi 

 rectly elucidating the general theory: leaving uncounted 

 the published parts of the ancillary compilation, Descrip 

 tive Sociology. Hence it may fairly be said that, if not 

 absolutely in the way specified, the promise of the pros 

 pectus has been redeemed. 



On looking back over the six-and-thirty years which have 

 passed since the Synthetic Philosophy was commenced, I am 

 surprised at my audacity in undertaking it, and still more 

 surprised by its completion. In 1860 my small resources 

 had been nearly all frittered away in writing and publishing 

 books which did not repay their expenses; and I was suf 

 fering under a chronic disorder, caused by over-tax of brain 

 in 1855, which, wholly disabling me for eighteen months, 

 thereafter limited my work to three hours a day, and usually 

 to less. How insane my project must have seemed to on 

 lookers, may be judged from the fact that before the first 

 chapter of the first volume was finished, one of my nervous 

 break-dow r ns obliged me to desist. But imprudent courses 

 do not always fail. Sometimes a forlorn hope is justified 

 by the event. Though, along with other deterrents, many 

 relapses, now lasting for weeks, now for months, and once 

 for years, often made me despair of reaching the end, yet 

 at length the end is reached. Doubtless in earlier days some 

 exultation would have resulted; but as age creeps on feel 

 ings weaken, and now my chief pleasure is in my emanci 

 pation. Still there is satisfaction in the consciousness that 

 losses, discouragements, and shattered health, have not pre 

 vented me from fulfilling the purpose of my life. 



LONDON, August, 1896. 



