Thefirst two essays in this book were written someten years ago and published in the SociologicalReview in 1908 and 1909. They had formed asingle paper, but it was found necessary to publishin two instalments at an interval of six months,and to cut down to a considerable extent the totalbulk.

It was lately suggested to me that as the numbersof the review in which the two essays appearedwere out of print, the fact that the subject concernedwas not without some current interest might justifya republication. It was not possible to do thiswithout trying to embody such fruits as theremight be of ten years’ further speculation andsome attempt to apply to present affairs the principleswhich had been sketched out.

The new comment very soon surpassed by farin bulk the original text, and constitutes, in fact, allbut a comparatively few pages of this book. Thisrather minute record is made here not because ithas any interest of its own, but especially to pointout that I have been engaged in trying to applyto the affairs of to-day principles which had takenshape ten years ago. I point this out not in order{6}to claim any gift of foresight in having suggestedso long ago reasons for regarding the stability ofcivilization as unsuspectedly slight, but because itis notorious that the atmosphere of a great waris unfavourable to free speculation. If the principlesupon which my argument is based had beenevolved during the present times, the reader wouldhave had special reason to suspect their validity,however plausible they might seem in the refractingair of national emergency.

The general purpose of this book is to suggestthat the science of psychology is not the mass ofdreary and indefinite generalities of which it sometimesperhaps seems to be made up; to suggest that,especially when studied in relation to other branchesof biology, it is capable of becoming a guide inthe actual affairs of life and of giving an understandingof the human mind such as may enableus in a practical and useful way to foretell someof the course of human behaviour. The presentstate of public affairs gives an excellent chancefor testing the truth of this suggestion, and addsto the interest of the experiment the strong incentiveof an urgent national peril.

If this war is becoming, as it obviously is, dailymore and more completely a contest of moral forces,some really deep understanding of the nature andsources of national morale must be at least asimportant a source of strength as the technicalknowledge of the militar

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