--[In an introductory word (dated
February, 1905) the author states that the studies for these papers had
been made twenty-five or twenty-seven years before. He probably referred
to the Monday Evening Club essay, "What Is Happiness?" (February, 1883).
See chap. cxli.]--A number of the books were sent to newspaper
reviewers, and so effectually had he concealed the personality of his
work that no critic seems to have suspected the book's authorship. It
was not over-favorably received. It was generally characterized as a
clever, and even brilliant, expose of philosophies which were no longer
startlingly new. The supremacy of self-interest and "man the
irresponsible machine" are the main features of 'What Is Man' and both of
these and all the rest are comprehended in his wider and more absolute
doctrine of that inevitable life-sequence which began with the first
created spark. There can be no training of the ideals, "upward and still
upward," no selfishness and unselfishness, no atom of voluntary effort
within the boundaries of that conclusion. Once admitting the postulate,
that existence is merely a sequence of cause and effect beginning with
the primal atom, and we have a theory that must stand or fall as a whole.
We cannot say that man is a creature of circumstance and then leave him
free to select his circumstance, even in the minutest fractional degree.
It was selected for him with his disposition; in that first instant of
created life.
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