viii THE WORLD OF LIFE 



enables us to answer the question — " Is Nature Cruel ? " 

 with a decided negative. 



This outline of the varied contents and objects of my 

 book, will, I hope, be useful to my readers, and especially to 

 my reviewers, by directing their attention to those parts of 

 the work in which they may be more especially interested. 



I also wish to point out that, however strange and 

 heretical some of my beliefs and suggestions may appear to 

 be, I claim that they have only been arrived at by a careful 

 study of the facts and conditions of the problem. I mention 

 this because numerous critics of my former work — Man's 

 Place in the Universe (to which this may be considered 

 supplementary) — treated the conclusions there arrived at 

 as if they were wholly matters of opinion or imagination, 

 and founded (as were their own) on personal likes or dis- 

 likes, without any appeal to evidence or to reasoning. This 

 is not a method I have adopted in any of my works. 



I have now only to express my thanks to the friends 

 and correspondents who have kindly assisted me with 

 numerical and other data for various portions of my book ; as 

 well as to those publishers and authors who have allowed me 

 to use the engravings or photographs with which my book is 

 illustrated. These are in every case (I believe) acknowledged 

 in the text, or on the various plates and figures. 



Broadstone, Wimborne, 

 Nove.?nbtr 1910. 



