This is a new edition of "Affirmations," originally published in 1915 by Houghton Mifflin, of New York. Part of Adeptio's "The Best of Havelock Ellis Collection," from the "Unforgettable Classic Series," this is not a facsimile reprint. Obvious typographical errors have been carefully corrected and the entire text has been reset and redesigned by Adeptio Editions to enhance readability, while respecting the original edition. "The final value of any book is not in the beliefs which it may give us or take away from us, but in its power to reveal to us our own selves. If I can stimulate any one in the search for his own affirmations, he and I may well rest content. Only with the help of such affirmations can we find a staff to comfort us through the valley of life." This paragraph from the preface to "Affirmations" is an epitome of the entire work. It sums up the philosophy of Havelock Ellis-individualism, in the highest sense of the word. "Affirmations" was first published in 1898, and it is now reprinted, without any changes-except for another remarkable preface. Like Bernard Shaw, Havelock Ellis often gives us the meat of his work in a preface. Mr. Ellis admits that he has deliberately failed to bring his book up-to-date. "We are concerned here," he says, "with an attempt to pierce to the core of numerous vital questions, using certain intensely vital instruments to aid us in that task. What became of those instruments at last happens not to matter at all. Dates have their interest. But what are biographical dictionaries for?" The book consists of five studies-of Nietzsche, Zola, Huysmans, Casanova, and St. Francis of Assisi. Discussing each of these men in his usual brilliant manner, Havelock Ellis gives us five passionate sermons on individualism. But these sermons are most unsermon-like. They are merely outpourings of the author's ideas, as suggested by five great individualists. There is nothing preachy or sweetly sentimental about the studies. They are frank, unconventional, penetrating essays-rich in eloquence and spiritual vigor. In Nietzsche, Mr. Ellis finds that "love of life which accepts reality without too much theorizing about it." Nietzsche, we are told, shunned Plato, for Plato was "the coward who fled from the real unto the unreal." Nietzsche believed in pain, because it throws us back on our own naked personalities, face to face with reality. Mr. Ellis describes Nietzsche's ideal man: "the brave, laconic, self-contained man; not lusting after self-expression, hating fanticism, shunning notoriety and knowing how to smile." From Nietzsche, then, Mr. Ellis draws these affirmations: Be hard, be self-reliant, be unafraid, and be original. And so Mr. Ellis takes up the others-Casanova, Zola, Huysmans, and St. Francis. From each of them he draws substantially the same affirmations as Nietzsche inspired. But in each someone feature is predominant. In Casanova, it is the fearlessness and fullness of life; in Zola it is the reality and thoroughness of life; in Huysmans it is the beauty of life as perceived through the senses; and, finally, in St. Francis of Assisi it is the hardihood and joyful suffering of life. His concluding words are: "Our feet cling to the earth, and it is well that we should be able to grip it closely and nakedly. But the earth beneath us is not all nature; there are instincts which lead elsewhere, and it is part of the art of living to use naturally all those instincts. And for us, as for him who wrote "De Imitatione Christi" there are still two wings whereby we may raise ourselves above the earth, simplicity and purity." (Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LIX, Number 30, 1 November 1915.) Among some of Havelock's great books, Affirmations is also considered one of his masterpieces and helped establish his reputation throughout the world.
Havelock Ellis was a social activist, a physician and a psychologist, whose best-known works concern sexuality and criminology. Among his over forty books, in 1890 he published "The Criminal," a remarkable work on criminal anthropology. In the same year, he published "The New Spirit," a collection of literary essays on Diderot, Heine, Whitman, Ibsen, and Tolstoy, and Ellis's attempt to synthesize science and religious mysticism. In 1898 he wrote "Affirmations," which contains essays on Nietzsche, Casanova, Zola, Huysmans, and St. Francis. In 1897, he published "Sexual Inversion," the first medical text in English about homosexuality, which he had co-authored with John Addington Symonds in an earlier edition, and which became a part of Ellis's six-volume "Studies in the Psychology of Sex." In 1922, he published "Little Essays of Love and Virtue," which aimed primarily at young people, youths and girls at the period of adolescence, who were in the author's thoughts in all the studies he wrote of sex because he was of that age when he first vaguely planned them. These titles are part of our "Unforgettable Classic Series: The Best of Havelock Ellis Collection." Born in Surrey, England, in 1859, Havelock Ellis was considered by the overwhelming majority of critics as the best translator of "Germinal," Émile Zola`s masterpiece. Ellis was associated with the Decadent movement and with the "Lutetian Society," a secret literary society, through which authors and translators like himself were able to provide British readers with translations of works which were often antagonistic to the Victorian ideals of morality-such as some of Émile Zola's controversial novels-aiming at expanding the cultural horizons of the few lucky readers who had access to them. Havelock Ellis died in Suffolk, England, in 1939.
