The Book of Er contains the remains and shreds of a book that has either never or always been found. The present volume has been reconstructed from extant passages, or salvaged from ruins...the detritus of a world without language. If "Part of the truth is that it ought to be withheld," this would be so, even in the time when our page might go beyond us to bring the light of a readership to bear on the witness of that book that is already within, without, and around us. The remnants of that book that lives in a daily intimacy with us already can only be communicated historically, inchoately, or in fragments... Whether it may be within the power of our best efforts towards the redaction and the presentation of it, still we will have put ourselves into the exhaustive efforts towards its achievement. Given the partial means and the many-sidedness of our abilities, what is left is a book that has fallen out from other pages, and that yet may not have given up on its meaning.