THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CHAPTER I PREFACE TO THE SECOND VOLUME THE Preacher said, "There is no new thing under the sun,"1 and one who had imbibed much of his wisdom warned that "the master of superstition is the people and in all superstition wise men follow fools: and arguments are fitted to practice in a reversed order." He who journeys in an unknown or little known country must expect that the accounts he brings back of strange peoples and customs will be doubted, for wise men have no more wisdom than fools in their superstition, and against superstition no argument will contend. I was aware when I essayed to explain the psychology of the American People that some of my deductions would be attacked, for my research convinced me that there was much superstition and fable to be overthrown, and some truth to be revealed. It was territory that had not been explored. It was to be expected that I should run counter to popular belief, and that it should appear as if I had sought to be iconoclastic merely for intellectual delight. 1 Ecclesiastes, 1, 9. • Bacon: Of Superstition, p. 96. |