This little book (which in view of the circumstances under which it is issued reminds me of my first and more especially of the first to my first, the Preface to the Two Edifying Discourses of 1843, which came out immediately after Either/Or) will, as I hope, recall this to ‘that single individual whom I with joy and gratitude call my reader’: ‘it desires to remain in retirement, as it was in concealment it had its origin – a little flower in the cover of a great forest.’ Preface. P. 313