yi FOREWORD 



he has absorbed the atmosphere of the place, become 

 familiar with its inhabitants, their ways of thought, and 

 their industries to a degree which is rare among even the 

 most experienced natives of this great city. Had he been 

 merely an intelligent visitor to their strange dwelling-place, 

 one who had wandered through its docklands, its business 

 quarters, its Smithfields, its Covent Gardens, its Mayfairs, 

 its Kensingtons, and its Hampsteads, and reported faith- 

 fully in these essays what he had heard and seen, then he 

 would have accomplished a rare feat . But he has done more 

 than this ; he is a serious student who has made frequent 

 journeys to the city of science in search of explanations to 

 the riddles of life, and has brought back suggestions and 

 answers which should obtain the ear of all thinking people, 

 and which deserve the closest scrutiny from men of science. 

 I look on these essays as a contribution to knowledge of an 

 altogether new kind. The man who suggests the most 

 likely path to truth stands next in the hierarchy of great- 

 ness to him who actually finds it. 



How is it possible, the reader of these essays may well 

 ask, that one who has been known these thirty years past 

 to a wide circle of readers as a writer of fiction, can know 

 anything concerning the secrets of life and of disease with 

 which men of science are not already familiar ? The 

 explanation is not far to seek. As a writer of true fiction 

 it was Mr. Morley Roberts' business to study human 

 nature and human action, and to grasp the conditions, 

 under which millions of individuals might be massed in 

 communities, and yet remain free and happy. In the 

 body of the healthy living animal, where billions of vital 



