PREFACE
upon the idea of the Samurai already given in "A Modern Utopia."
Finally bound up in this volume is "God the Invisible King," which was not written and issued until 1917. It is put here into one cover with "First and Last Things" because the former explains and is necessary to the understanding of the latter work. It is a strenuous attempt to gather up into the recognised forms and terms of contemporary religion the beliefs embodied in the earlier book. The writer has personified and emotionalised to his utmost. He has done all he can in this book to express his ideas on current religious phraseology. Perhaps he has done too much. His religious outlook is in truth Promethean rather than Theistic, Manichean rather than Catholic, Persian rather than either Greek or Hebrew.
Let him insist upon the connection of "God the Invisible King" with the metaphysical sections of "First and Last Things."
In the voluminous discussion that has arisen out of "God the Invisible King" nothing has so impressed him as the impossibility of getting to understandings with people who are unconscious of metaphysical difficulties and who consequently use words with an uncritical confidence. Anyone who would fully understand the reasoning of "God the Invisible King" must grasp the fundamental scepticism about human thought which underlies that discourse.
The writer questions the ultimate validity of human thought—he does not deny it but he questions it; he is saturated with the idea of its incurable in-
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