first three chapters bound in one volume about the year 1888; and then
went on to work at the last division, which I had already begun.

This dealt with what is more popularly known as the women's question:
with the causes which in modern European societies are leading women to
attempt readjustment in their relation to their social organism; with
the direction in which such readjustments are taking place; and with the
results which in the future it appears likely such readjustments will
produce.

After eleven years, 1899, these chapters were finished and bound in a
large volume with the first two divisions. There then only remained to
revise the book and write a preface. In addition to the prose argument
I had in each chapter one or more allegories; because while it is easy
clearly to express abstract thoughts in argumentative prose, whatever
emotion those thoughts awaken I have not felt myself able adequately
to express except in the other form. (The allegory "Three Dreams in a
Desert" which I published about nineteen years ago was taken from this
book; and I have felt that perhaps being taken from its context it was
not quite clear to every one.) I had also tried throughout to illustrate
the subject with exactly those particular facts in the animal and human
world, with which I had come into personal contact and which had helped
to form the conclusions which were given; as it has always seemed to
me that in dealing with sociological questions a knowledge of the exact
manner in which any writer has arrived at his view is necessary in
measuring its worth. The work had occupied a large part of my life, and
I had hoped, whatever its deficiencies, that it might at least stimulate
other minds, perhaps more happily situated, to an enlarged study of the
question.

In 1899 I was living in Johannesburg, when, owing to ill-health, I was
ordered suddenly to spend some time at a lower level. At the end of
two months the Boer War broke out. Two days after war was proclaimed I
arrived at De Aar on my way back to the Transvaal; but Martial Law had
already been proclaimed there, and the military authorities refused to
allow my return to my home in Johannesburg and sent me to the Colony;
nor was I allowed to send any communication through, to any person, who
might have extended some care over my possessions. Some eight months
after, when the British troops had taken and entered Johannesburg; a
friend, who, being on the British side