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Bronson Tweed Publishing
The Wonders of Life
The Wonders of Life
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PREFACE
The publication of the present work on The Wonders of Life has been occasioned by the success of The Riddle of the Universe, which I wrote five years ago. Within a few months of the issue of this study of the monistic philosophy, in the autumn of 1899, ten thousand copies were sold. Moreover, the publisher having been solicited on many sides to issue a popular edition of the work, more than a hundred thousand copies of this were sold within a year. This extraordinary and—as far as I was concerned—unexpected success of a philosophical work which was by no means light reading, and which had no particular charm of presentation, affords ample proof of the intense interest taken by even the general reader in the object of the work—the construction of a rational and solid philosophy of life.
Naturally, the clear opposition of my monistic philosophy, based as it was on the most advanced and sound scientific knowledge, to the conventional ideas and to an outworn "revelation," led to the publication of a vast number of criticisms and attacks. During the first twelve months more than a hundred reviews and a dozen large pamphlets appeared, full of the most contradictory strictures and the most curious observations. One of the ablest of my pupils, Heinrich Schmidt, gave a summary and criticism of them in his Der Kampf um die Welträthsel, in the autumn of 1900. However, the literary struggle went on to assume gigantic proportions when twelve different translations of the Riddle appeared, and led to an ever-increasing agitation in every educated country of the Old and the New World.
The publication of the present work on The Wonders of Life has been occasioned by the success of The Riddle of the Universe, which I wrote five years ago. Within a few months of the issue of this study of the monistic philosophy, in the autumn of 1899, ten thousand copies were sold. Moreover, the publisher having been solicited on many sides to issue a popular edition of the work, more than a hundred thousand copies of this were sold within a year. This extraordinary and—as far as I was concerned—unexpected success of a philosophical work which was by no means light reading, and which had no particular charm of presentation, affords ample proof of the intense interest taken by even the general reader in the object of the work—the construction of a rational and solid philosophy of life.
Naturally, the clear opposition of my monistic philosophy, based as it was on the most advanced and sound scientific knowledge, to the conventional ideas and to an outworn "revelation," led to the publication of a vast number of criticisms and attacks. During the first twelve months more than a hundred reviews and a dozen large pamphlets appeared, full of the most contradictory strictures and the most curious observations. One of the ablest of my pupils, Heinrich Schmidt, gave a summary and criticism of them in his Der Kampf um die Welträthsel, in the autumn of 1900. However, the literary struggle went on to assume gigantic proportions when twelve different translations of the Riddle appeared, and led to an ever-increasing agitation in every educated country of the Old and the New World.
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