“Personally” (as we are more wont to say in our youth than in our other
ages) I find that a book with an Introduction always worries me a
little. I want to read the book itself, not the Introduction, but for
some reason I have a feeling that it is my unpleasant _duty_ to read the
Introduction. Usually I decide to read the book first and the
Introduction afterward; but then my reading is tainted throughout by my
sense of guilt; for I have learned by experience that I never do read
the Introduction afterward. So, in time, I have reached the conclusion
that an Introduction ought to inform the reader’s mere first glance that
he needn’t feel guilty if he doesn’t read it even afterward. Adopting
this view, the author of the present Introduction finds himself
perfectly equipped for his task. Readers might be made much more
uncomfortable if the Introduction of “New Lands” were what such a book
might conventionally expect: a professionally scientific
writer—preferably an outraged practising astronomer.
* * * * *
A few years ago I had one of those pleasant illnesses that permit the
patient to read in bed for several days without self-reproach; and I
sent down to a bookstore for whatever might be available upon criminals,
crimes and criminology. Among the books brought me in response to this
morbid yearning was one with the title, “The Book of the Damned.”
I opened it, not at the first page, looking for Cartouche Jonathan Wild,
Pranzini, Lacenaire, and read the following passage:
“The fittest survive.
What is meant by the fittest?