Affirmations

“It is easy to dislike his book, it is possible to dislike it furiously; but the book is so honest, so earnest, so stimulating in its tolerant but convinced unconventionality, that it claims for itself a like sincerity and seriousness in the reader.... Mr. Ellis has produced a book which will be hotly discussed, no doubt, for it is nothing if not initiative, we might almost say revolutionary; but it is not a book to be disregarded.... It has sincerity and it has power; and sincerity and power compel at least attention.”—Speaker.

“Mr. Havelock Ellis has discovered a ‘New Spirit.’ We have read him with care and patience, and we should be sorry to describe it; we only know that it is not intoxicating.”—Scots Observer.

“Welcome is warmly due to this fresh, buoyant, and sincere volume of essays by Mr. Havelock Ellis.... There are parts of the study of Heine which are not unworthy to be named—it is high praise—with Matthew Arnold’s inimitable paper upon that writer, a paper almost as classic as Heine himself.... The last word upon so suggestive and finished a piece of work ought to be one of ungrudging praise.”—Academy.

“Mr. Carlyle described, it seems to us, Mr. Havelock Ellis himself with great exactness in the person of a certain biographer of Voltaire, ‘an inquiring, honest-hearted character, many of whose statements must have begun to astonish even himself.’ Mr. Ellis must be very ‘inquiring,’ for we have seldom met with one who knows so many things that other people do not know.”—Athenæum.

“Each of these essays is a thorough and well-considered piece of work, admirable in information, firm in grasp, stimulating in style, appreciative in matter, and the survey afforded is broad.... It is an altogether unusual work, both for its ambition and for its matter; it brings the reader near to some of the marked ideas of the time.”—Nation.

“The points of the New Spirit are its passion for getting things right in the matter of property and in the matter of true human worth.”—Daily News.

PRESS OPINIONS ON “THE NEW SPIRIT.”
(Continued.)

“The only coherent constituent of the New Spirit which this book professes to set forth, is a vehement hatred, amounting to a passion, against conventional unveracities, and a determination that they should be swept away.... We cannot imagine anything of which it could be more necessary for human nature, so taught [by our Lord], to purge itself, than the New Spirit of Havelock Ellis.”—Spectator.

“Mr. Havelock Ellis has written an interesting and significant book, which it is quite easy to ridicule, but which certainly deserves a fair hearing.... Apparently these writers are chosen because they all agree in a hatred of shams, in looking facts in the face, and in demanding provision for the healthy satisfaction of animal wants.... Mr. Ellis writes with force and insight; but, whether from brevity or want of caution, he leaves with regard to these subjects an impression which he would probably not himself desire to produce.”—Murray’s Magazine.

“The concluding chapter, wherein Mr. Ellis expresses his own ‘intimate thought and secret emotion,’ is one of the best utterances of the New Spirit which we have ever read.”—Echo.

“Un volume de haute critique littéraire qui rappelle le style fort et la méthode stricte de Hennequin.”—Mercure de France.

“A more foolish, unwholesome, perverted piece of sentimental cant we have never wasted our time over.”—World.

“Excellent examples of appreciative criticism of an exceedingly interesting series of authors, of whom every one ought to know at least as much as Mr. Ellis here tells us so freshly and vivaciously.”—Scottish Leader.

“We only refer to this unpleasant compilation of cool impudence and effrontery to warn our readers against it.”—Dundee Advertiser.

“Beautiful both in thought and expression. But Mr. Ellis seems to have laid aside altogether the wise restraint which characterises his volume on ‘The Criminal.’... The scientific spirit, of which at other times he has shown himself a distinguished exponent, should have prevented him from such error.”—Arbroath Herald.

“Ardent, enthusiastic, and eloquent.”—Boston Literary World.

“It is not often that the weary and heart-sore reviewer, struggling to keep abreast of the Protean outpourings of the press, falls in with anything so well-informed, so rich in thought and suggestion as The New Spirit.”—Wit and Wisdom.

London: WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, Paternoster Square.