C. J. Loneman, Esq.

The analysis he drew up, which was printed in “ Notes on Books” of November 30, 1883,
was as follows :—
“This book is a confession. The Author describes the successive stages of emotion and thought through which he passed, till he arrived at the conclusions which are set forth in the latter part of the volume. He claims to have erased from his mind the traditions and learning of the past ages, and to stand face to face with nature and with the unknown. The general aim of the work is to free thought from every trammel,- with the view of its entering upon another
and larger series of ideas than those which
PREFACE x]
have occupied the brain of man so many centuries. He believes that there is a whole world of ideas outside and beyond those which now exercise us.
«The Author’s ideas will be best illus- trated by the following extracts :—
““¢T remember a cameo of Augustus Cesar —the head of the emperor is graven in deli- cate lines, and shows the most exquisite proportions. It is a balanced head, a head adjusted to the calmest intellect. That head when it was living contained a circle of ideas, the largest, the widest, the most profound current in his time. All that philosophy had taught, all that practice, experiment, and empiricism had discovered, was familiar to him. There was no knowledge in the ancient world but what was accessible to the Emperor of Rome. Now at this day there are amongst us heads as finely proportioned
as that cut out in the cameo. Though
xi THE STORY OF MY HEART
these living men do not possess arbitrary power, the advantages of arbitrary power— as far as knowledge is concerned—are secured to them by education, by the printing-press, and the facilities of our era. It is reason- able to imagine a head of our time filled with the largest, the widest, the most pro- found ideas current in the age. Augustus Cesar, however great his intellect, could not in that balanced head have possessed the ideas familiar enough to the living head of this day. As we have a circle of ideas un- known to Augustus Cesar, so I argue there are whole circles of ideas unknown to us.’
‘For himself, for the individual, the Author desires physical perfection—he despises ex- ternal circumstances.
“«Tt is in myself that I desire increase, profit, and exaltation of body, mind, and - soul. The surroundings, the clothes, the
dwelling, the social status, the circumstances
PREFACE xill
are to me utterly indifferent. Let the floor of the room be bare, let the furniture be a plank table, the bed a mere pallet. Let the house be plain and simple, but in the midst of air and light. These are enough —a cave would be enough; in a warmer climate the open air would suffice. Let me be furnished in myself with health, safety, strength, the perfection of physical existence ; let my mind be furnished with highest thoughts of soul-life. Let me be in myself myself fully. The pageantry of power, the still more foolish pageantry of wealth, the senseless precedence of place; I fail words to express my utter contempt for such pleasure or such ambitions.’
“From all nature—from the universe— he desires to take its energy, grandeur, and beauty. He looks forward to the possibility of ideal man, and adduces reasons for the
possibility of such ideal man living in en-
xiv THE STORY OF MY HEART
joyment of his faculties for a great length of time, He is anxious that the culture of the soul should be earnestly carried out, as earnestly as the culture of the body was in ancient Greece, as that of the mind is at the present day. So highly does he place the soul, that if it can but retain its con- sciousness and attain its desires he thinks it matters not if the entire material world disappears. Yet the work teems with ad- miration of material beauty. He considers the idea of deity inferior, and believes that there is something higher. He ends as he commences with prayer for the fullest soul- life. The book, in fact, might have been called an Autobiography of a Soul, or of Thought. It is not an autobiography of the petty events of life; from the Author’s point of view the soul is the man, and not the clothes he wears.”