I recently finished reading this book, which I found on Project Gutenberg, and rarely have I felt such a need for footnotes. The references made throughout made some very long passages (and even one or two essays) perfectly incomprehensible because it was difficult to gain context from the little information there was about what he was discussing.

Has anyone encountered a similar problem with this book or another? If so, how did you solve it?

To be sure, it wasn't that the whole book was incomprehensible because of this, and there were plenty of interesting ideas that were clear and easily understood. However, the intermittent passages where I couldn't understand what was going on made it a slog at times.