the Marvellous according to
the old childlike spirit. They say in one breath, "Very extraordinary!"
and in the next breath ask, "How do you account for it?" If the Author
of this work has presumed to borrow from science some elements of
interest for Romance, he ventures to hope that no thoughtful reader--and
certainly no true son of science--will be disposed to reproach him. In
fact, such illustrations from the masters of Thought were essential to
the completion of the purpose which pervades the work.

That purpose, I trust, will develop itself in proportion as the story
approaches the close; and whatever may appear violent or melodramatic
in the catastrophe, will, perhaps, be found, by a reader capable of
perceiving the various symbolical meanings conveyed in the story,
essential to the end in which those meanings converge, and towards which
the incidents that give them the character and interest of of fiction,
have been planned and directed from the commencement.

Of course, according to the most obvious principles of art, the narrator
of a fiction must be as thoroughly in earnest as if he were the narrator
of facts. One could not tell the most extravagant fairy-tale so as to
rouse and sustain the attention of the most infantine listener, if the
tale were told as if the taleteller did not believe in it. But when the
reader lays down this "Strange Story," perhaps he will detect, through
all the haze of romance, the outlines of these images suggested to his
reason: Firstly, the image of sensuous, soulless Nature, such as
the Materialist had conceived it; secondly, the image of Intellect,
obstinately separating all its inquiries from the belief in the
spiritual essence and destiny of man, and incurring all kinds of
perplexity and resorting to all kinds of visionary speculation before it
settles at last into the simple faith which unites the philosopher and
the infant; and thirdly, the image of the erring but pure-thoughted
visionary, seeking over-much on this earth to separate soul from mind,
till innocence itself is led astray by a phantom, and reason is lost in
the space between earth and the stars. Whether in these pictures there
be any truth worth the implying, every reader must judge for himself;
and if he doubt or deny that there be any such truth, still, in the
process of thought which the doubt or denial enforces, he may chance on
a truth which it pleases himself to discover.

"Most of the Fables of AEsop,"