Page:The Pathway to Reality, Volume 1 (1903).djvu/9

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viii
PREFACE

to seek to understand and set forth the plan of the building, and this is all that I have tried to do. In a subsequent series of Lectures I hope to deal with the meaning of that plan for Conduct and Religion.

These Lectures were for the most part delivered ex tempore, of course with assistance derived from carefully prepared notes. I did not choose this form from any indisposition to find time to write. The reason was that experience in other vocations, of the difficulty of explaining remote and obscure issues to those whom I had to assist to grasp them, had taught me that one ought to watch one s audience, to follow the working of its mind, and to try to mould one s discourse accordingly. I did not see why this should not be as true of an Academic lecture hall as it seemed to me to be of other places. Whether I have been right I do not know. What is printed in the pages which follow is, at all events, just what the stenographer took down, with verbal corrections.

In conclusion, I wish to express my gratitude to my friend Mr Kemp for reading the proofs of the book, and for many suggestions made while it was passing through the press.