V SOCIAL DISEASES AND WORSE REMEDIES 189 



any subject of public interest, his reflections, be 

 fore he has done with the business, will be very 

 like those of Johnny Gilpin, " who little thought, 

 when he set out, of running such a rig." Such 

 undoubtedly are mine when I contemplate these 

 twelve documents, and call to mind the distinct ad 

 dition to the revenue of the Post Office which must 

 have accrued from the mass of letters and 

 pamphlets which have been delivered at my 

 door; to say nothing of the unexpected light 

 upon my character, motives, and doctrines, which 

 has been thrown by some of the " Times' " corre 

 spondents, and by no end of comments elsewhere. 

 If self-knowledge is the highest aim of man, I 

 ought by this time to have little to learn. And 

 yet, if I am awake, some of my teachers unable, 

 perhaps, to control the divine fire of the poetic 

 imagination which is so closely akin to, if not a 

 part of, the mythopceic faculty have surely 

 dreamed dreams. So far as my humbler and 

 essentially prosaic faculties of observation and 

 comparison go, plain facts are against them. But, 

 as I may be mistaken, I have thought it well to 

 prefix to the letters (by way of " Prolegomena ") 

 an essay which appeared in the " Nineteenth 

 Century" for January, 1888, in which the prin 

 ciples that, to my mind, lie at the bottom of the 

 " social question " are stated. So far as Indi 

 vidualism and Regimental Socialism are con 

 cerned, this paper simply emphasizes and expands 



