of Belief_, to which
may be added a novel called _An Immortal Soul_.[4]

As a result of the attention excited by these or by certain of these
books, I was in the year 1907 invited to visit America and deliver a
series of addresses on the Socialist propaganda of the day. These
addresses were presently rewritten and published in a volume called _A
Critical Examination of Socialism_.

Between that time and the outbreak of the recent war I played an active
part, together with other persons, in devising and setting on foot
certain schemes of anti-Socialist propaganda in this country. Most of my
own efforts I devoted to the collection and promulgation of sound social
statistics, especially those relating to the current distribution of
wealth, and I may here mention, without even suggesting a name, that I
discussed the importance of such statistics with a leading Conservative
statesman, who, expressing his sympathy with my views, added at the same
time that, so far as the constitution of his own mind was concerned,
they were not temperamentally his own. "To me," he said, "columns of
figures are merely so many clouds." I answered, "That may be; but they
are clouds which, when taken together, make not clouds, but lightning."

Anyhow, by the outbreak of war these schemes were suspended, and changed
conditions may now make methods other than those which seemed then
appropriate necessary. But, as for myself, the first four years of
war-time I devoted entirely to the production of a new volume, _The
Limits of Pure Democracy_, of which a French translation is being
issued, and which may, I hope, prove useful to sober conservatives of
more than one school and country, as it aims at establishing a formula
acceptable, so far as it goes, to persons who are at present
adversaries.

In addition to the works here mentioned, two volumes have been published
of _Collected Essays_, on which certain of the works just mentioned are
based. I have further published, besides my little book on Cyprus, two
short volumes of verse, and a poem of which I shall speak presently,
called _Lucretius on Life and Death_. All these works indicate, if taken
together, the nature of the fallacies--intellectual, religious, and
social--which have in succession provoked them, which have not yet
exhausted themselves, and which it has been the ambition of the writer
to discredit or modify.

Such have been the activities which, devoted to a continuous and
developi