I count it a mistake of our mistaken democracy, that every man who can read print is allowed to believe that he can read all that is printed.

I count it a misfortune that serious books are exposed in the public market, like slaves exposed naked for sale.

But there we are, since we live in an age of mistaken democracy, we must go through with it.
I warn the generality of readers, that this present book will seem to them only a rather more revolting mass of wordy nonsense than the last.

I would warn the generality of critics to throw it in the waste paper basket without more ado.
As for the limited few, in whom one must perforce find an answerer, I may as well say straight off that I stick to the solar plexus.

That statement alone, I hope, will thin their numbers considerably.
Finally, to the remnants of a remainder, in order to apologize for the sudden lurch into cosmology, or cosmogony, in this book, I wish to say that the whole thing hangs inevitably together.