This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... PREFACE In the month of June, 1902, when I published "The Fear of Living," I had no idea how favorably it would be received by the public. Family tragedies were not the fashion, and I had dared to take a sorely-tried old woman for my heroine. Since that time new editions have succeeded one another every year. I have had to answer many hundreds of letters (often very badly and briefly) which made me see that I had friends among my readers. At last I was asked, both in France and abroad, to explain the ideas which are the foundation of my work. So, although my novel only aims at increasing the will and the courage to live and not at establishing any doctrine, I was induced to speak about our various modern attitudes towards life. After my addresses I was honored by a request to put them into print. I have gathered together here the notes which helped me to prepare them. If after four years I feel some pride in recording the prolonged influence of a work whose art is perfectly natural and sincere, I must thank for it all those unknown friends who contributed to the result by their infectious sympathy. I I The fear of living is a disease which extends its 'ravages principally to old civilisations like our own. The symptoms of this moral phthisis may be outwardly contradictory; for there are two ways of being afraid to live as there are two kinds of selfishness. The first, the most frequent to-day and the most cowardly, has already been denounced by Dante, who in the third Canto of the Inferno, brands it with the red-hot iron of his scorn. Guided by Virgil, the poet arrives at the gate of the City of Tears. He has not yet entered the door when he hears, rising up to him from the bottom of the abyss, groans, shrieks and cries of despair, ...