That is what “Ardath:  The Story of a Dead Self” seeks to explain, and I have nothing to take back from what I have written in its pages.  In its experimental teaching it is the natural and intended sequence of “A Romance of Two Worlds,” and was meant to assist the studies of the many who had written to me asking for help.  And despite the fact that some of these persons, owing to an inherent incapacity for concentrated thought upon any subject, found it too ‘difficult’ as they said, for casual reading, its reception was sufficiently encouraging to decide me on continuing to press upon public attention the theories therein set forth.  “The Soul of Lilith” was, therefore, my next venture,—­a third link in the chain I sought to weave between the perishable materialism of our ordinary conceptions of life, and the undying spiritual quality of life as it truly is.  In this I portrayed the complete failure that must inevitably result from man’s prejudice and intellectual pride when studying the marvellous mysteries of what I would call the Further World,—­that is to say, the ‘Soul’ of the world which is hidden deeply behind its external Appearance,—­and how impossible it is and ever must be that any ‘Soul’ should visibly manifest itself where there is undue attachment to the body.  The publication of the book was a very interesting experience.  It was and is still less ‘popular’ than “Ardath”—­but it has been gladly welcomed by a distinctly cultured minority of persons famous in art, science and literature, whose good opinion is well worth having.  With this reward I was perfectly content, but my publisher was not so easily pleased.  He wanted something that would ‘sell’ better.  To relieve his impatience, therefore, I wrote a more or less ‘sensational’ novel dealing with the absinthe drinkers of Paris, entitled “Wormwood,” which did a certain amount of good in its way, by helping to call public attention to the devastation wrought by the use of the pernicious drug among the French and other Continental peoples—­and after this, receiving a strong and almost imperative impetus towards that particular goal whither my mind was set, I went to work again with renewed vigour on my own favourite and long studied line of argument, indifferent alike to publisher or public.  Filled with the fervour of a passionate and proved faith, I wrote “Barabbas:  A Dream of the World’s Tragedy,”—­and this was the signal of separation from my excellent old friend, George Bentley, who had not the courage to publish a poetic romance which introduced, albeit with a tenderness and reverence unspeakable, so far as my own intention was concerned, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ.  He wrote to me expressing his opinion in these terms:—­“I can conscientiously praise the power and feeling you exhibit for your vast subject, and the rush and beauty of the language, and above all I feel that the book is the genuine outcome of a fervent faith all too rare in these days, but—­I fear its effect on