SOCIAL DISEASES AND WORSE REMEDIES. 189 



those of Johnny Gilpin, " who Httle thought, when 

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

 doubtedly are mine when I contemplate these 

 twelve documents, and call to mind the distinct 

 addition 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' " correspondents, 

 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 es- 

 sentially prosaic faculties of observation and com- 

 parison 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 Cen- 

 tury " for January, 1888, in which the principles 

 that, to my mind, lie at the bottom of the " social 

 question " are stated. So far as Individualism 

 and Regimental Socialism are concerned, this 

 paper simply emphasizes and expands the opinions 

 expressed in an address to the members of the 

 Midland Institute, delivered seventeen years ear- 



