New Ideas.

Explanation of the Title Page.

It is the unfortunate custom of Poets, Philosophers, and others who wrap themselves in the mysterious, to leave the public to guess at the meaning of their transcendental conceptions or eccentric symbolism. Do the public know the meaning of King Arthur's Sword Excalibur, or of the web that was woven by the Lady of Shalott? But as believing that he who reads may run, as secure of the information, he can then advance rapidly in confidence, I propose to explain that which I assume may be interpreted, if people would only take the trouble; as that is however the very thing they will not take, I therefore propose to save them the necessity. The idea is that these are the ideas of the twentieth century presented as new ideas to the nineteenth—as that they will then be accepted, which may now be held in hesitation, as the acceptions for acceptance or rejection. The word "New," in the title, is made of circles, squares, and triangles, as the symbols of attributes within each letter or part of a letter. When we come to interstand the ideas inclosed in letters, the letters will be more appreciated.

The word "Ideas" is composed of thorn lettering, which I invented in order to intimate those disagreeable penetrations, as the thorn is the symbol of irritation, as of a person being a thorn in your side or the side of another, so New Ideas are thorns to the disinclimovable. In making the letters, the S is a compelled Z in reverse, before the wavement was introduced for convenience, just as the sound of double V was changed to double U. The symbol below represents in the broad black circumference line the void, outside of matter where there is no matter. The little ray lines to the centre from the circumference are our rudimentary efforts to understand the inclosement. The symbols in the centre are a pair of page 22 spectacles, with eyes in them, as the magnifiers to see for perception; the scales to weigh what you see, as reflection; and the note of interrogation is for you to be always asking Why? of Nature; so the symbols, as interpreted, are see, weigh, and investigate. The clot of the note of interrogation is the mustard seed from which the curling froud as of growing inquiry, springs to be a tree for the panoplation of the nations.