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 contemj^late 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 mythopoeic 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 



