Conclusion — Don Quixote in the Contemporary Tragi-Comedy

"A voice crying in the wilderness!"—ISA. xl. 3.

Need is that I bring to a conclusion, for the present at any rate, these essays that threaten to become like a tale that has no ending. They have gone straight from my hands to the press in the form of a kind of improvization upon notes collected during a number of years, and in writing each essay I have not had before me any of those that preceded it. And thus they will go forth full of inward contradictions—apparent contradictions, at any rate—like life and like me myself.