A Note to the Reader This book is in all probability the last of a series of writings, of which—disregarding certain earlier disconnected essays—my Anticipationswas the beginning. Originally I intended Anticipationsto be my sole digression from my art or trade (or what you will) of an imaginative writer. I wrote that book in order to clear up the muddle in my own mind about innumerable social and political questions, questions I could not keep out of my work, which it distressed me to touch upon in a stupid haphazard way, and which no one, so far as I knew, had handled in a manner to satisfy my needs. But Anticipationsdid not achieve its end. I have a slow constructive hesitating sort of mind, and when I emerged from that undertaking I found I had still most of my questions to state and s…