AUTHOR'S NOTE FOR THE AMERICAN EDITION
IT so happens that when I was first putting forth this little book, and wondering where it would find readers, my hopes fixed themselves chiefly on the United States; and I formed the ambition that "The New Word" should be born an American citizen. But the difficulty of finding any agent to whom I could confide the task of production proved too great to be overcome by correspondence, and I therefore committed it to the press in the republic of Geneva. Since it could not be born in the New World, I am glad that it should now obtain naturalisation.
In the few years that have gone by already the world's mind has been turning inside out so fast that I am reminded of a remark made by me to the first publisher to whom I showed the manuscript: "These thoughts are in the air; unless you bring out the book quickly half the things it says will no longer be new." Since then a series of scientific workers such as Curie, Thomson and Ostwald have been making discoveries, as it were, in confirmation of the argument: and it is right that I should put that forward as a ground for confidence in what of the prophecy yet remains unfulfilled.
A. U.