x INTRODUCTION 
who cannot count above five, and yet who own 
flocks and herds, that every native knows when he 
has got all his own cattle, not by counting, but by 
remembering each one individually. 
The savage is with his herds daily; the mother 
has the love of her children constantly in her heart; 
but when one’s book goes forth from him, in a sense 
it never returns. It is like the fruit detached from 
the bough. And yet to sit down and talk of one’s 
books as a father might talk of his sons, who had 
left his roof and gone forth to make their own way 
in the world, is not an easy matter. The author’s 
relation to his book is a little more direct and per- 
sonal, after all, more a matter of will and choice, 
than a father’s relation to his child. The book 
does not change, and, whatever its fortunes, it re- 
mains to the end what its author made it. The 
son is an evolution out of a long line of ancestry, 
and one’s responsibility for this or that trait is often 
very slight; but the book is an actual transcript of 
his mind, and is wise or foolish according as he made 
it so. Hence I trust my reader will pardon me if I 
shrink from any discussion of the merits or demerits 
of these intellectual children of mine, or indulge 
in any very confidential remarks with regard to 
them. 
But without vanity I think I may praise their 
new make-up. My publishers have my thanks, and 
I trust those of my readers, for the thought and 
