And it is a pleasure to reflect, notwithstanding the human inconsistencies I began by noting, that in this country, at least, with its predominant intelligence, and liberty of thought, no writer who comes with a message of possible good to humanity, even though that message tear the painted mask from the face of Conventionality, need fear that he will be denied an audience through the miserable pseudo-modesty which prevailed in the past; the superstitious reverence for which has ruined so many noble, promising lives, and inflicted more pangs upon innocent womanhood than a hundred years of hell could atone for.

The golden inscription on the gate of Delphi—Know Thyself—never promised a more perfect realization than in the present ceaseless and indefatigable inquiry into those mysterious morphological and psychical sciences which hold the hitherto unguessed secrets of both spiritual and material existence; and while we justly glory in the beauties of the flower, and the star, and the forest and the sea, is it rational, is it proper, that we should blush to contemplate the attributes and power of the Deity, as expressed in that most wonderful and elaborate of all His works—Man?