Tannhäuser

PREFACE AS, after long observation and careful study, the biologist sees that what at first seemed isolated and arbitrary acts are really part of a series of regular changes, and presently has the life-history of the being that he is examin- ing clear from Alpha to Omega in his mind ; as, during a battle, the relative importance of its various incidents is lost, the more so owing to the excitement and activity of the combatant, and to the fact that he is himself involved in the vicissitudes which he may have set himself to observe ; while even for the commander, though the smoke-pall may lift now and again to show some brilliant charge or desperate hand-to- hand struggle, he may fail to grasp its significance in his dispositions ; or indeed find it to be quite unexpected and foreign to his calculations ; yet a few years or months later the same battle may be lucidly, tersely, and connectedly described, so that a child is able to follow its varying fortunes with delight and comprehension : just so has my own observa- tion of a life-history more subtle, a battle more terrible, been at last co-ordinated : I can view the long struggle from a B 9