NEW EDITION

This book is one of those which, if it lives for a number of decades,
and if it requires any Preface at all, wants a new one every ten
years. The first Preface to a book is apt to be explanatory, perhaps
apologetic, in the expectation of attacks from various quarters. If the
book is in some points in advance of public opinion, it is natural that
the writer should try to smooth the way to the reception of his more or
less aggressive ideas. He wishes to convince, not to offend,--to obtain
a hearing for his thought, not to stir up angry opposition in those
who do not accept it. There is commonly an anxious look about a first
Preface. The author thinks he shall be misapprehended about this or that
matter, that his well-meant expressions will probably be invidiously
interpreted by those whom he looks upon as prejudiced critics, and if he
deals with living questions that he will be attacked as a destructive
by the conservatives and reproached for his timidity by the noisier
radicals. The first Preface, therefore, is likely to be the weakest part
of a work containing the thoughts of an honest writer.

After a time the writer has cooled down from his excitement,--has got
over his apprehensions, is pleased to find that his book is still read,
and that he must write a new Preface. He comes smiling to his task. How
many things have explained themselves in the ten or twenty or thirty
years since he came before his untried public in those almost plaintive
paragraphs in which he introduced himself to his readers,--for the
Preface writer, no matter how fierce a combatant he may prove, comes on
to the stage with his shield on his right arm and his sword in his left
hand.

The Professor at the Breakfast-Table came out in the "Atlantic Monthly"
and introduced itself without any formal Preface. A quarter of a century
later the Preface of 1882, which the reader has just had laid before
him, was written. There is no mark of worry, I think, in that. Old
opponents had come up and shaken hands with the author they had attacked
or denounced. Newspapers which had warned their subscribers against him
were glad to get him as a contributor to their columns. A great change
had come over the community with reference to their beliefs. Christian
believers were united as never before in the feeling that, after all,
their common object was to elevate the moral and religious standard of
humanity. But within the special compartments of the g