THE DANCE OF LIFE
PREFACE
This book was planned many years ago. As to theidea running through it, I cannot say when that arose.My feeling is, it was born with me. On reflection, indeed,it seems possible the seeds fell imperceptibly inyouth—from F. A. Lange, maybe, and other sources—togerminate unseen in a congenial soil. Howeverthat may be, the idea underlies much that I have written.Even the present book began to be written, and tobe published in a preliminary form, more than fifteenyears ago. Perhaps I may be allowed to seek consolationfor my slowness, however vainly, in the saying ofRodin that “slowness is beauty,” and certainly it isthe slowest dances that have been to me most beautifulto see, while, in the dance of life, the achievement ofa civilisation in beauty seems to be inversely to therapidity of its pace.
Moreover, the book remains incomplete, not merelyin the sense that I would desire still to be changing andadding to each chapter, but even incomplete by the absenceof many chapters for which I had gathered material,and twenty years ago should have been surprisedto find missing. For there are many arts, not amongthose we conventionally call “fine,” which seem to mefundamental for living. But now I put forth the bookvias it stands, deliberately, without remorse, well contentso to do.
Once that would not have been possible. A bookmust be completed as it had been originally planned,finished, rounded, polished. As a man grows older hisideals change. Thoroughness is often an admirableideal. But it is an