46. Men of inferior degree, it is true, are not given to judging themselves, and therefore is it that fate passes judgment upon them. They are the slaves of a destiny of almost unvarying sternness, for it is only when man has been judged by himself that destiny can be transformed. Men such as these will not master, or alter within them, the event that they meet; nay, they themselves become morally transformed by the very first thing that draws near them. If misfortune befall them, they grovel before it and stoop down to its level; and misfortune, with them, would seem always to wear its poorest and commonest aspect. They see the finger of fate in every least thing that may happen—be it choice of profession, a friendship that greets them, a woman who passes, and smiles. To them chance and destiny always are one; but chance will be seldom propitious if accepted as destiny. Hostile forces at once take possession of all that is vacant within us, nor filled by the strength of our soul; and whatever is void in the heart or the mind becomes a fountain of fatal influence. The Margaret of Goethe and Ophelia of Shakespeare had perforce to yield meekly to fate, for they were so feeble that each gesture they witnessed seemed fate's own gesture to them. But yet, had they only possessed some fragment of Antigone's strength—the Antigone of Sophocles—would they not then have transformed the destinies of Hamlet and Faust as well as their own? And if Othello had taken Corneille's Pauline to wife and not Desdemona, would Desdemona's destiny then, all else remaining unchanged, have dared to come within reach of the enlightened love of Pauline? Where was it, in body or soul, that grim fatality lurked? And though the body may often be powerless to add to its strength, can this ever be true of the soul? Indeed, the more that we think of it, the clearer does it become that there could be one destiny only that might truly be said to triumph over man, the one that might have the power loudly to cry unto all, "From this day onward there shall come no more strength to thy soul, neither strength nor ennoblement." But is there a destiny in the world empowered to hold such language?

47. And yet virtue often is chastised, and the advent of misfortune hastened, by the soul's very strength; for the greater our love may be, the greater the surface becomes we expose to majestic sorrow; wherefore none the less does the sage never cease his endeavours to enlarge this beautiful surface. Yes, it must be admitted, destiny is not always content to crouch in the darkness; her ice-cold hands will at times go prowling in the light, and seize on more beautiful victims. The tragic name of Antigone has already escaped me; and there will, doubtless, be many will say, "She surely fell victim to destiny, all her great force notwithstanding; and is she not the instance we long have been seeking in vain?" It cannot be gainsaid: Antigone fell into the hands of the ruthless goddess, for the reason that there lay in her soul three times the strength of any ordinary woman. She died; for fate had contrived it so that she had to choose between death and what seemed to her a sister's imperative duty. She suddenly found herself wedged between death and love—love of the purest and most disinterested kind, its object being a shade she would never behold on earth. And if destiny thus has enabled to lure her into the murderous angle that duty and death had formed, it was only because her soul, that was loftier far than the soul of the others, saw, stretching before it, the insurmountable barrier of duty—that her poor sister Ismene could not see, even when it was shown her. And, at that moment, as they both stood there on the threshold of the palace, the same voices spoke to them; Antigone listening only to the voice from above, wherefore she died; Ismene unconscious of any save that which came from below—and she lived. But instil into Antigone's soul something of the weakness that paralysed Ophelia and Margaret, would destiny then have thought it of service to beckon to death as the daughter of Oedipus issued from the doorway of Creon's palace? It was, therefore, solely because of the strength of her soul that destiny was able to triumph. And, indeed, it is this that consoles the wise and the just—the heroes; destiny can vanquish them only by the good she compels them to do. Other men are like cities with hundred gates, that she finds unguarded and open; but the upright man is a fortified city, with the one gate only—of light; and this gate remains closed till love be induced to knock, and to crave admission. Other men she compels to obey her; and destiny, doing her will, wills nothing but evil; but would she subdue the upright, she needs must desire noble acts. Darkness then will no longer enwrap her approach. The upright man is secure in the light that enfolds him; and only by a light more radiant still can she hope to prevail. Destiny then will become more beautiful still than her victim. Ordinary men she will place between personal sorrow and the misfortune of others; but to master the hero or saint, she must cause him to choose between the happiness of others and the grief that shall fall on himself. Ordinary men she lays siege to with the aid of all that is ugly; against the others she perforce must enlist whatever is noblest on earth. Against the first she has thousands of weapons, the very stones in the road becoming engines of mischief; but the others she can only attack with one irresistible sword, the gleaming sword of duty and truth. In Antigone's story is found the whole tale of destiny's empire on wisdom. Jesus who died for us, Curtius who leaped into the gulf, Socrates who refused to desist from his teaching, the sister of charity who yields up her life to tending the sick, the humble wayfarer who perishes seeking to rescue his fellows from death—all these have been forced to choose, all these bear the mark of Antigone's glorious wound on their breast. For truly those who live in the light have their magnificent perils also; and wisdom has danger for such as shrink from self-sacrifice, though it may be that they who shrink from self-sacrifice are perhaps not very wise.

48. Pronounce the word "destiny," and in the minds of all men an image arises of gloom and of terror—of death. In their thoughts they regard it, instinctively, as the lane that leads straight to the tomb. Most often, indeed, it is only the name that they give unto death, when its hand is not visible yet. It is death that looms in the future, the shadow of death upon life. "None can escape his destiny" we often exclaim when we hear of death lying in wait for the traveller at the bend of the road. But were the traveller to encounter happiness instead, we would never ascribe this to destiny; if we did, we should have in our mind a far different goddess. And yet, are not joys to be met with on the highways of life that are greater than any misfortune, more momentous even than death? May a happiness not be encountered that the eye cannot see? and is it not of the nature of happiness to be less manifest than misfortune, to become ever less apparent to the eye as it reaches loftier heights? But to this we refuse to pay heed. The whole village, the town, will flock to the spot where some wretched adventure takes place; but there are none will pause for an instant and let their eyes rest on a kiss, or a vision of beauty that gladdens the soul, a ray of love that illumines the heart. And yet may the kiss be productive of joy no less great than the pain that follows a wound. We are unjust; we never associate destiny with happiness; and if we do not regard it as being inseparable from death, it is only to connect it with disaster even greater than death itself.

49. Were I to refer to the destiny of OEdipus, Joan of Arc, Agamemnon, you would give not a thought to their lives, but only behold the last moments of all, the pathway of death. You would stoutly maintain that their destiny was of the saddest, for that their end was sad. You forget, however, that death can never be happy; but nevertheless it is thus we are given to judging of life. It is as though death swallowed all; and should accident suddenly end thirty years Lot unclouded joy, the thirty years would be hidden away from our eyes by the gloom of one sorrowful hour.

50. It is wrong to think of destiny only in connection with death and disaster. When shall we cease to believe that death, and not life, is important; that misfortune is greater than happiness? Why, when we try to sum up a man's destiny, keep our eyes fixed only on the tears that he shed, and never on the smiles of his joy? Where have we learned that death fixes the value of life, and not life that of death? We deplore the destiny of Socrates, Duncart, Antigone, and many others whose lives were noble; we deplore; their destiny because their end was sudden and cruel; and we are fain to admit that misfortune prevails over wisdom and virtue alike. But, first of all, you yourself are neither just nor wise if you seek in wisdom and justice aught else but wisdom and justice alone. And further, what right have we thus to sum up an entire existence in the one hour of death? Why conclude, from the fact that Socrates and Antigone met with unhappy ends, that it was their wisdom or virtue brought unhappiness to them? Does death occupy more space in life than birth? Yet do you not take the sage's birth into account as you ponder over his destiny. Happiness or unhappiness arises from all that we do from the day of our birth to the day of our death; and it is not in death, but indeed in the days and the years that precede it, that we can discover a man's true happiness or sorrow—in a word, his destiny. We seem to imagine that the sage, whose terrible death is written in history, spent all his life in sad anticipation of the end his wisdom prepared; whereas in reality, the thought of death troubles the wise far less than it troubles the wicked. Socrates had far less cause than Macbeth to dread an unhappy end. And unhappy as his death may have been, it at least had not darkened his life; he had not spent all his days in dying preliminary deaths, as did the Thane of Cawdor. But it is difficult for us not to believe that a wound, that bleeds a few hours, must crumble away into nothingness all the peace of a lifetime.

51. I do not pretend that destiny is just, that it rewards the good and punishes the wicked. What soul that were sure of reward could ever claim to be good? But we are less just than destiny even, when it is destiny that we judge. Our eyes see only the sage's misfortune, for misfortune is known to us all; but we see not his happiness, for to understand the happiness of the wise and the just whose destinies we endeavour to gauge, we must needs be possessed of wisdom and justice that shall be fully equal to theirs. When a man of inferior soul endeavours to estimate a great sage's happiness, this happiness flows through his fingers like water; yet is it heavy as gold, and as brilliant as gold, in the hand of a brother sage. For to each is the happiness given that he can best understand. The sage's misfortune may often resemble the one that befalls other men; but his happiness has nothing in common with that which he who is not wise terms happiness. In happiness there are far more regions unknown than there are in misfortune. The voice of misfortune is ever the same; happiness becomes the more silent as it penetrates deeper.

When we put our misfortunes into one scale of the balance, each of us lays, in the other, all that he deems to be happiness. The savage flings feathers, and powder, and alcohol into the scale; civilised men some gold, a few days of delirium; but the sage will deposit therein countless things our eyes cannot see—all his soul, it may be, and even the misfortune that he will have purified.

52. There is nothing in all the world more just than happiness, nothing that will more faithfully adopt the form of our soul, or so carefully fill the space that our wisdom clings open. Yet is it most silent of all that there is in the world. The Angel of Sorrow can speak every language—there is not a word but she knows; but the lips of the Angel of Happiness are sealed, save when she tells of the savage's joys. It is hundreds of centuries past that misfortune was cradled, but happiness seems even now to have scarcely emerged from its infancy. There are some men have learned to be happy; why are there none whose great gladness has urged them to lift up their voice in the name of the silent Archangel who has flooded their soul with light? Are we not almost teaching happiness if we do only speak of it; invoking it, if we let no day pass without pronouncing its name? And is it not the first duty of those who are happy to tell of their gladness to others? All men can learn to be happy; and the teaching of it is easy. If you live among those who daily call blessing on life, it shall not be long ere you will call blessing on yours. Smiles are as catching as tears; and periods men have termed happy, were periods when there existed some who knew of their happiness. Happiness rarely is absent; it is we that know not of its presence. The greatest felicity avails us nothing if we know not that we are happy; there is more joy in the smallest delight whereof we are conscious, than in the approach of the mightiest happiness that enters not into our soul. There are only too many who think that what they have cannot be happiness; and therefore is it the duty of such as are happy, to prove to the others that they only possess what each man possesses deep down in the depths of his heart. To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of happiness. It were well if, from time to time, there should come to us one to whom fortune had granted a dazzling, superhuman felicity, that all men regarded with envy; and if he were very simply to say to us, "All is mine that you pray for each day: I have riches, and youth, and health; I have glory, and power, and love; and if to-day I am truly able to call myself happy, it is not on account of the gifts that fortune has deigned to accord me, but because I have learned from these gifts to fix my eyes far above happiness. If my marvellous travels and victories, my strength and my love, have brought me the peace and the gladness I sought, it is only because they have taught me that it is not in them that the veritable gladness and peace can be found. It was in myself they existed, before all these triumphs; and still in myself are they now, after all my achievement; and I know full well that had but a little more wisdom been mine, I might have enjoyed all I now enjoy without the aid of so much good fortune. I know that today I am happier still than I was yesterday, because I have learned at last that I stand in no need of good fortune in order to free my soul, to bring peace to my thoughts, to enlighten my heart."

53. Of this the sage is fully aware, though no superhuman happiness may have descended upon him. The upright man knows it too, though he be less wise than the sage, and his consciousness less fully developed; for an act of goodness or justice brings with it a kind of inarticulate consciousness that often becomes more effective, more faithful, more loving, than the consciousness that springs into being from the very deepest thought. Acts of this nature bring, above all, a special knowledge of happiness. Strive as we may, our loftiest thoughts are always uncertain, unstable; but the light of a goodly deed shines steadily on, and is lasting. There are times when deep thought is no more than merely fictitious consciousness; but an act of charity, the heroic duty fulfilled—these are true consciousness; in other words, happiness in action. The happiness of Marcus Aurelius, who condones a mortal affront; of Washington, giving up power when he feared that his glory was leading his people astray—the happiness of these will differ by far from that of some mean-souled, venomous creature who might (if such a thing may be assumed) by mere chance have discovered some extraordinary natural law. Long is the road that leads from the satisfied brain to the heart at rest, and only such joys will nourish there as are proof against winter's storms. Happiness is a plant that thrives far more readily in moral than in intellectual life. Consciousness—the consciousness of happiness, above all—will not choose the intellect as a hiding-place for the treasure it holds most dear. At times it would almost seem as if all that is loftiest in intellect, fraught with most comfort, is transformed into consciousness only when passed through an act of virtue. It suffices not to discover new truths in the world of thought or of fact. For ourselves, a truth only lives from the moment it modifies, purifies, sweetens something we have in our soul. To be conscious of moral improvement is of the essence of consciousness. Some beings there are, of vigorous intellect, whose intellect never is used to discover a fault, or foster a feeling of charity. And this happens often with women. In cases where a man and a woman have equal intellectual power, the woman will always devote far less of this power to acquiring moral self-knowledge. And truly the intellect that aims not at consciousness is but beating its wings in the void. Loss and corruption needs must ensue if the force of our brain be not at once gathered up in the purest vase of our heart. Nor can such an intellect ever know happiness; nay, it seems to invite misfortune. For intellect may be of the loftiest, mightiest, and yet perhaps never draw near unto joy; but in the soul that is gentle, and pure, and good, sorrow cannot for ever abide. And even though the boundary line between intellect and consciousness be not always as clearly defined as here we seem to assume, even though a beautiful thought in itself may be often a goodly action—yet, none the less will a beautiful thought, that springs not from noble deed, or wherefrom noble deed shall not spring, add but little unto our felicity; whereas a good deed, though it father no thought, will ever fall like soft bountiful rain on our knowledge of happiness.

54. "How final must his farewell to happiness have been," exclaims Renan, speaking of the renouncement of Marcus Aurelius—"how final must his farewell to happiness have been, for him to be capable of such excess! None will ever know how great was the suffering of that poor, stricken heart, or the bitterness the waxen brow concealed, calm always, and even smiling. It is true that the farewell to happiness is the beginning of wisdom, and the surest road to happiness. There is nothing sweeter than the return of joy that follows the renouncement of joy, as there is nothing more exquisite, of keener, deeper delight, than the enchantment of the disenchanted."

In these terms does a sage describe a sage's happiness; but is it true that the happiness of Marcus Aurelius, as of Renan himself, arose only from the return of joy that followed the renouncement of joy, and from the enchantment of the disenchanted? For then were it better that wisdom be less, that we be the less disenchanted. But what can the wisdom desire that declares itself thus disenchanted? Was it not truth that it sought? and is there a truth that can stifle the love of truth in the depths of a loyal heart? The truth that has taught you that man is wicked and nature unjust; that justice is futile, and love without power, has indeed taught you nothing if it have not at the same time revealed a truth that is greater still, one that throws on these disillusions a light more brilliant, more ample, than the myriad flickering beams it has quenched all around you, For there lurks unspeakable pride, and pride of the poorest kind, in thus declaring ourselves satisfied because we can find satisfaction in nothing that is. Such satisfaction, in truth, is discontent only, too sluggish to lift its head; and they only are discontented who no longer would understand.

Does not the man who conceives it his duty to forswear all happiness renounce something as well that, as yet, has not turned into happiness? And besides, what are the joys to which we bid this somewhat affected farewell? It must surely be right to discard all happiness injurious to others; but happiness that injures others will not long wear the semblance of happiness in the eyes of the sage. And when his wisdom at length has revealed the profounder joys, will it not be in all unconsciousness that he renounces those of lesser worth?

Let us never put faith in the wisdom or gladness that is based on contempt of a single existing thing; for contempt and renouncement, its sickly offspring, offer asylum to none but the weak and the aged. We have only the right to scorn a joy when such scorn is wholly unconscious. But so long as we listen to the voice of contempt or renouncement, so long as we suffer these to flood our heart with bitterness, so long must the joy we discard be a joy that we still desire.

We must beware lest there enter our soul certain parasitic virtues. And renouncement, often, is only a parasite. Even if it do not enfeeble our inward life, it must inevitably bring disquiet. Just as bees cease from work at the approach of an intruder into their hive, so will the virtues and strength of the soul into which contempt or renouncement has entered, forsake all their tasks, and eagerly flock round the curious guest that has come in the wake of pride; for so long as renouncement be conscious, so long will the happiness found therein have its origin truly in pride. And he who is bent on renouncement had best, first of all, forswear the delights of pride, for these are wholly vain and wholly deceptive.

55. Within reach of all, demanding neither boldness nor energy, is this "enchantment of the disenchanted!" But what name shall we give to the man who renounces that which brought happiness to him, and rather would surely lose it to-day than live in fear lest fortune haply deprive him thereof on the morrow? Is the mission of wisdom only to peer into the uncertain future, with ear on the stretch for the footfall of sorrow that never may come—but deaf to the whirr of the wings of the happiness that fills all space?

Let us not look to renouncement for happiness till we have sought it elsewhere in vain. It is easy to be wise if we be content to regard as happiness the void that is left by the absence of happiness. But it was not for unhappiness the sage was created; and it is more glorious, as well as more human, to be happy and still to be wise. The supreme endeavour of wisdom is only to seek in life for the fixed point of happiness; but to seek this fixed point in renouncement and farewell to joy, is only to seek it in death. He who moves not a limb is persuaded, perhaps, he is wise; but was this the purpose wherefor mankind was created? Ours is the choice— whether wisdom shall be the honoured wife of our passions and feelings, our thoughts and desires, or the melancholy bride of death. Let the tomb have its stagnant wisdom, but let there be wisdom also for the hearth where the fire still burns.

56. It is not by renouncing the joys that are near us that we shall grow wise; but as we grow wise we unconsciously abandon the joys thatt now are beneath us. Even so does the child, as years come to him, give up one by one without thinking the games that have ceased to amuse. And just as the child learns far more from his play than from work that is given him, so does wisdom progress far more quickly in happiness than in misfortune. It is only one side of morality that unhappiness throws into light; and the man whom sorrow has taught to be wise, is like one who has loved and never been loved in return. There must always be something unknown to the love whereto no other love has made answer; and this, too, will remain unknown to him whose wisdom is born of sorrow.

"Is happiness truly as happy as people imagine?" was asked of two happy ones once by a philosopher whom protracted injustice had saddened. No; it is a thing more desirable far, but also much less to be envied, than people suppose; for it is in itself quite other than they can conceive who have never been perfectly happy. To be gay is not to be happy, nor will he who is happy always be gay. It is only the little ephemeral pleasures that forever are smiling; and they die away as they smile. But some loftiness once obtained, lasting happiness becomes no less grave than majestic sorrow. Wise men have said it were best for us not to be happy, so that happiness thus might be always the one thing desired. But how shall the sage, to whom happiness never has come, be aware that wisdom is the one thing alone that happiness neither can sadden nor weary? Those thinkers have learned to love wisdom with a far more intimate love whose lives have been happy, than those whose lives have been sad. The wisdom forced into growth by misfortune is different far from the wisdom that ripens beneath happiness. The first, where it seeks to console, must whisper of happiness; the other tells of itself. He who is sad is taught by his wisdom that happiness yet may be his; he who is happy is taught by his wisdom that he may become wiser still. The discovery of happiness may well be the great aim of wisdom; and we needs must be happy ourselves before we can know that wisdom itself contains all.

57. There are some who are wholly unable to support the burden of joy. There is a courage of happiness as well as a courage of sorrow. It may even be true that permanent happiness calls for more strength in man than permanent sorrow; for the heart wherein wisdom is not delights more in the expectation of that which it has not yet, than in the full possession of all it has ever desired. He in whom happiness dwells is amazed at the heart that finds aliment only in fear or in hope, and that cannot be nourished on what it possesses, though it possess all it ever desired.

We often see men who are strong and morally prudent whom happiness yet overcomes. Not finding therein all they sought, they do not defend it, or cling to it, with the energy needful in life. We must have already acquired some not inconsiderable wisdom to be undismayed at perceiving that happiness too has its sorrow, and to be not induced by this sorrow to think that ours cannot be the veritable happiness. The most precious gift that happiness brings is the knowledge that springs up within us that it is not a thing of mere ecstasy, but a thing that bids us reflect. It becomes far less rare, far less inaccessible, from the moment we know that its greatest achievement is to give to the soul that is able to prize it an increase of consciousness, which the soul could elsewhere never have found. To know what happiness means is of far more importance to the soul of man than to enjoy it. To be able long to love happiness great wisdom needs must be ours; but a wisdom still greater for us to perceive, as we lie in the bosom of cloudless joy, that the fixed and stable part of that joy is found in the force which, deep down in our consciousness, could render us happy still though misfortune wrapped us around. Do not believe you are happy till you have been led by your happiness up to the heights whence itself disappears from your gaze, but leaving you still, unimpaired, the desire to live.

58. There are some profound thinkers, such as Pascal, Schopenhauer, Hello, who seem not to have been happy, for all that the sense of the infinite, universal, eternal, was loftily throned in their soul. But it may well be an error to think that he who gives voice to the multitude's sorrow must himself always be victim to great personal despair. The horizon of sorrow, surveyed from the height of a thought that has ceased to be selfish, instinctive, or commonplace, differs but little from the horizon of happiness when this last is regarded from the height of a thought of similar nature, but other in origin. And after all, it matters but little whether the clouds be golden or gloomy that yonder float over the plain; the traveller is glad to have reached the eminence whence his eye may at last repose on illimitable space. The sea is not the less marvellous and mysterious to us though white sails be not for ever flitting over its surface; and neither tempest nor day that is radiant and calm is able to bring enfeeblement unto the life of our soul. Enfeeblement comes through our dwelling, by night and by day, in the airless room of our cold, self- satisfied, trivial, ungenerous thoughts, at a time when the sky all around our abode is reflecting the light of the ocean.

But there is a difference perhaps between the sage and the thinker. It may be that sorrow will steal over the thinker as he stands on the height he has gained; but the sage by his side only smiles—and this smile is so loyal, so human and natural, that the humblest creature of all must needs understand, and will gladly welcome it to him, as it falls like a flower to the foot of the mountain. The thinker throws open the road "which leads from the seen to the unseen;" the sage throws open the highway that takes us from that which we love to-day to that which we yet shall love, and the paths that ascend from that which has ceased to console to that which, for long time to come, shall be laden with deep consolation. It is needful, but not all-sufficient, to have reflected deeply and boldly on man, and nature, and God; for the profoundest thought is of little avail if it contain no germ of comfort. Indeed, it is only thought that the thinker, as yet, does nor wholly possess; as the other thoughts are, too, that remain outside our normal, everyday life. It is easier far to be sad and dwell in affliction than at once to do what time in the end will always compel us to do: to shake ourselves free from affliction. He who spends his days gloomily, in constant mistrust of his fellows, will often appear a profounder thinker than the other, who lives in the faith and honest simplicity wherein all men should dwell. Is there a man can believe he has done all it lay in his power to do if, as he meditates thus, in the name of his brethren, on the sorrows of life, he hides from them—anxious, perhaps, not to weaken his grandiose picture of sorrow—the reasons wherefore he accepts life, reasons that must be decisive, since he himself continues to live? The thought must be incomplete surely whose object is not to console. It is easier for you to tell me the cause of your sorrow than, very simply, to speak of the deeper, the weightier reasons that induce your instinct to cling to this life whose distress you bemoan. Which of us finds not, unsought, many thousands of reasons for sorrow? It is doubtless of service that the sage should point out those that are loftiest, for the loftiest reasons for sorrow must be on the eve of becoming reasons for gladness and joy. But reasons that have not within them these germs of greatness and happiness—and in moral life open spaces abound where greatness and happiness blend—these are surely not worthy of mention. Before we can bring happiness to others, we first must be happy ourselves; nor will happiness abide within us unless we confer it on others. If there be a smile upon our lips, those around us will soon smile too; and our happiness will become the truer and deeper as we see that these others are happy. "It is not seemly that I, who, willingly, have brought sorrow to none, should permit myself to be sad," said Marcus Aurelius, in one of his noblest passages. But are we not saddening ourselves, and learning to sadden others, if we refuse to accept all the happiness offered to man?

59. The humble thought that connects a mere satisfied glance, an ordinary, everyday act of simple kindness, or an insignificant moment of happiness, with something eternal, and stable, and beautiful, is of far greater value, and infinitely nearer to the mystery of life, than the grand and gloomy meditation wherein sorrow, love, and despair blend with death and destiny and the apathetic forces of nature. Appearances often deceive us. Hamlet, bewailing his fate on the brink of the gulf, seems profounder, imbued with more passion, than Antoninus Pius, whose tranquil gaze rests on the self-same forces, but who accepts them and questions them calmly, instead of recoiling in horror and calling down curses upon them. Our slightest gesture at nightfall seems more momentous by far than all we have done in the day; but man was created to work in the light, and not to burrow in darkness.

60. The smallest consoling idea has a strength of its own that is not to be found in the most magnificent plaint, the most exquisite expression of sorrow. The vast, profound thought that brings with it nothing but sadness is energy burning its wings in the darkness to throw light on the walls of its prison; but the timidest thought of hope, or of cheerful acceptance of inevitable law, in itself already is action in search of a foothold wherefrom to take flight into life. It cannot be harmful for us to acknowledge at times that action begins with reality only, though our thoughts be never so large and disinterested and admirable in themselves. 'For all that goes to build up what is truly our destiny is contained in those of our thoughts which, hurried along by the mass of ideas still obscure, indistinct, incomplete, have had strength sufficient—or been forced, it may be—to turn into facts, into gestures, into feelings and habits. We do not imply by this that the other thoughts should be neglected. Those that surround our actual life may perhaps be compared with an army besieging a city. The city once taken, the bulk of the troops would probably not be permitted to pass through the gates. Admission would be doubtless withheld from the irregular part of the army—barbarians, mercenaries, all those, in a word, whose natural tendencies would lead them to drunkenness, pillage, or bloodshed. And it might also very well happen that fully two-thirds of the troops would have taken no part in the final decisive battle. But there often is value in forces that appear to be useless; and the city would evidently not have yielded to panic and thrown open her gates, had the well-disciplined force at the foot of the walls not been flanked by the hordes in the valley. So is it in moral life, too. Those thoughts are not wholly vain that have been unable to touch our actual life; they have helped on, supported, the others; yet is it these others alone that have fully accomplished their mission And therefore does it behove us to have in our service, drawn up in front of the crowded ranks of our sad and bewildered thoughts, a group of ideas more human and confident, ready at all times to penetrate vigorously into life.

61. Even when our endeavour to emerge from reality is due to the purest desire for immaterial good, one gesture must still be worth more than a thousand intentions; nor is this that intentions are valueless, but that the least gesture of goodness, or courage, or justice, makes demands upon us far greater than a thousand lofty intentions. Chiromantists pretend that the whole of our life is engraved on our palm; our life, according to them, being a certain number of actions which imprint ineffaceable marks on our flesh, before or after fulfilment; whereas not a trace will be left by either thoughts or intentions. If I have for many long days cherished projects of murder or treachery, heroism or sacrifice, my hand will tell nothing of these; but if I have killed some one— involuntarily perhaps, imagining he was about to attack me; or if I have rescued a child from the flames that enwrapped it—my hand will bear, all my life, the infallible sign of love or of murder. Chiromancy maybe delusion or not—it matters but little; here we are concerned with the great moral truth that underlies this distinction. The place that I fill in the universe will never be changed by my thought; I shall be as I was to the day of my death; but my actions will almost invariably move me forwards or backwards in the hierarchy of man. Thought is a solitary, wandering, fugitive force, which advances towards us today and perhaps on the morrow will vanish, whereas every deed presupposes a permanent army of ideas and desires which have, after lengthy effort, secured foot- hold in reality.

62. But we find ourselves here far away from the noble Antigone and the eternal problem of unproductive virtue. It is certain that destiny—understood in the ordinary sense of the word as meaning the road that leads only to death—is wholly disregardful of virtue. This is the gulf, to which all systems of morality must come, as to a central reservoir, to be purified or troubled for ever; and here must each man decide whether he will justify fate or condemn it. Antigone's sacrifice may well be regarded as the type of all such as are made in the cause of duty. Do we not all of us know of heroic deeds whose reward has been only misfortune? A friend of my own, one day, as he lay on the bed he was never to leave save for that other one only which is eternal, pointed out to me, one after the other, the different stratagems fate had contrived to lure him to the distant city, where the draught of poisonous water awaited him that he was to swallow, wherefrom he must die. Strangely clear were the countless webs that destiny had spun round this life; and the most trivial event seemed endowed with marvellous malice and forethought. Yet had my friend journeyed forth to that city in fulfilment of one of those duties that only the saint, or the hero, the sage, detects on the horizon of conscience. What can we say? But let us leave this point for the moment, to return to it later. My friend, had he lived, would on the morrow have gone to another city, called thither by another duty; nor would he have paused to inquire whether it was indeed duty that summoned him. There are beings who do thus obey the commands that their heart whispers low. They fret not at fortune's injustice; they care not though virtue be thankless; theirs it is only to fight the injustice of men, which is the only injustice whereof they, as yet, seem aware.

Ought we never to hesitate, then? and is our duty most faithfully done when we ourselves are wholly unconscious that this thing that we do is a duty? Is it most essential of all that we should attain a height whence duty no longer is looked on as the choice of our noblest feelings, but as the silent necessity of all the nature within us?

63. There are some who wait and question themselves, who ponder, consider, and then at length decide. They too are right, for it matters but little whether the duty fulfilled be result of instinct or intellect. The gestures of instinct will often recall the delicate, naive and vague, unexpected beauty that clings to the child's least movement, and touches us deeply; but the gestures of matured resolve have a beauty, too, of their own, more earnest and statelier, stronger. It is given to very few hearts to be naively perfect, nor should we go seek in them for the laws of duty. And besides, there is many a sober-hued duty that instinct will fail to perceive, that yet will be clearly espied by mature resolution, bereft though this be of illusion; and man's moral value is doubtless established by the number of duties he sees and sets forth to accomplish.

It is well that the bulk of mankind should listen to the instinct that prompts them to sacrifice self on the altar of duty, and that without too close self-questioning; for long must the questioning be ere consciousness will give forth the same answer as instinct. And those who do thus close their eyes, and in all meekness follow their instinct, are in truth following the light that is borne at their head, though they know it not, see it not, by the best of their ancestors. But still this is not the ideal; and he who gives up the least thing of all for the sake of his brother, well knowing what it is he gives up and wherefore he does it, stands higher by far in the scale of morality than the other, who flings away life without throwing one glance behind.

64. In this world there are thousands of weak, noble creatures who fancy that sacrifice always must be the last word of duty; thousands of beautiful souls that know not what should be done, and seek only to yield up their life, holding that to be virtue supreme. They are wrong; supreme virtue consists in the knowledge of what should be done, in the power to decide for ourselves whereto we should offer our life. The duty each holds to be his is by no means his permanent duty. The paramount duty of all is to throw our conception of duty into clearest possible light. The word duty itself will often contain far more error and moral indifference than virtue. Clytemnestra devoted her life to revenge—she murdered her husband for that he had slain Iphigenia; Orestes sacrificed his life in avenging Agamemnon's death on Clytemnestra. And yet it has only needed a sage to pass by, saying, "pardon your enemies," for all duties of vengeance to be banished for ever from the conscience of man. And so may it one day suffice that another sage shall pass by for many a duty of sacrifice too to be exiled. But in the meanwhile there are certain ideas that prevail on renouncement, resignation, and sacrifice, that are far more destructive to the most beautiful moral forces of man than great vices, or even than crimes.

65. There are some occasions in life, inevitable and of general bearing, that demand resignation, which is necessary then, and good; but there are many occasions when we still are able to fight; and at such times resignation is no more than veiled helplessness, idleness, ignorance. So is it with sacrifice too, which indeed is most often the withered arm resignation still shakes in the void. There is beauty in simple self- sacrifice when its hour has come unsought, when its motive is happiness of others; but it cannot be wise, or of use to mankind, to make sacrifice the aim of one's life, or to regard its achievement as the magnificent triumph of the spirit over the body. (And here let us add that infinitely too great importance is generally ascribed to the triumph of spirit over body, these pretended triumphs being most often the total defeat of life.) Sacrifice may be a flower that virtue will pluck on its road, but it was not to gather this flower that virtue set forth on its travels. It is a grave, error to think that the beauty of soul is most clearly revealed by the eager desire for sacrifice; for the soul's fertile beauty resides in its consciousness, in the elevation and power of its life. There are some, it is true, that awake from their sleep at the call of sacrifice only; but these lack the strength and the courage to seek other forms of moral existence. It is, as a rule, far easier to sacrifice self—to give up, that is, our moral existence to the first one who chooses to take it—than to fulfil our spiritual destiny, to accomplish, right to the end, the task for which we were created. It is easier far, as a rule, to die morally, nay, even physically, for others, than to learn how best we should live for them. There are too many beings who thus lull to sleep all initiative, personal life, and absorb themselves wholly in the idea that they are prepared and ready for sacrifice. The consciousness that never succeeds in travelling beyond this idea, that is satisfied ever to seek an occasion for giving all that which it has, is a consciousness whose eyes are sealed, and that crouches be- numbed at the foot of the mountain. There is beauty in the giving of self, and indeed it is only by giving oneself that we do, at the end, begin to possess ourselves somewhat; but if all that we some day shall give to our brethren is the desire to give them ourselves, then are we surely preparing a gift of most slender value. Before giving, let us try to acquire; for this last is a duty where from we are not relieved by the fact of our giving. Let us wait till the hour of sacrifice sounds; till then, each man to his work. The hour will sound at last; but let us not waste all our time in seeking it on the dial of life.

66. There are many ways of sacrifice; and I speak not here of the self- sacrifice of the strong, who know, as Antigone knew, how to yield themselves up when destiny, taking the form of their brothers' manifest happiness, calls upon them to abandon their own happiness and their life. I speak of the sacrifice here that is made by the feeble; that leans for support, with childish content, on the staff of its own inanity—that is as an old blind nurse, who would rock us in the palsied arms of renouncement and useless suffering. On this point let us note what John Ruskin says, one of the best thinkers of our time: "The will of God respecting us is that we shall live by each other's happiness and life; not by each other's misery or death. A child may have to die for its parents; but the purpose of Heaven is that it shall rather live for them; that not by sacrifice, but by its strength, its joy, its force of being, it shall be to them renewal of strength; and as the arrow in the hand of the giant. So it is in all other right relations. Men help each other by their joy, not by their sorrow. They are not intended to slay themselves for each other, but to strengthen themselves for each other. And among the many apparently beautiful things which turn, through mistaken use, to utter evil, I am not sure but that the thoughtlessly meek and self-sacrificing spirit of good men must be named as one of the fatallest. They have so often been taught that there is a virtue in mere suffering, as such . . . that they accept pain and defeat as if these were their appointed portion; never understanding that their defeat is not the less to be mourned because it is more fatal to their enemies than to them."

67. You are told you should love your neighbour as yourself; but if you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbour. Learn therefore to love yourself with a love that is wise and healthy, that is large and complete. This is less easy than it would seem. There is more active charity in the egoism of a strenuous clairvoyant soul than in all the devotion of the soul that is helpless and blind. Before you exist for others it behoves you to exist for yourself; before giving, you first must acquire. Be sure that, if deeply considered, more value attaches to the particle of consciousness gained than to the gift of your entire unconsciousness. Nearly all the great things of this world have been done by men who concerned themselves not at all with ideas of self- sacrifice. Plato's thoughts flew on—he paused not to let his tears fall with the tears of the mourners in Athens; Newton pursued his experiments calmly, nor left them to search for objects of pity or sorrow; and Marcus Aurelius above all (for here we touch on the most frequent and dangerous form of self-sacrifice) Marcus Aurelius essayed not to dim the brightness of his own soul that he might confer happiness on the inferior soul of Faustina. And if this was right in the lives of these men, of Plato and Newton and Marcus Aurelius, it is equally right in the life of every soul; for each soul has, in its sphere, the same obligations to self as the soul of the greatest. We should tell ourselves, once and for all, that it is the first duty of the soul to become as happy, complete, independent, and great as lies in its power.' Herein is no egoism, or pride. To become effectually generous and sincerely humble there must be within us a confident, tranquil, and clear comprehension of all that we owe to ourselves. To this end we may sacrifice even the passion for sacrifice; for sacrifice never should be the means of ennoblement, but only the sign of our being ennobled.

68. Let us be ready to offer, when necessity beckons, our wealth, and our time, and our life, to our less fortunate brethren, making them thus an exceptional gift of a few exceptional hours; but the sage is not bound to neglect his happiness, and all that environs his life, in sole preparation for these few exceptional hours of greater or lesser devotion. The truest morality tells us to cling, above all, to the duties that return every day, to acts of inexhaustible brotherly kindness. And, thus considered, we find that in the everyday walk of life the solitary thing we can ever distribute among those who march by our side, be they joyful or sad, is the confidence, strength, the freedom and peace, of our soul. Let the humblest of men, therefore, never cease to cherish and lift up his soul, even as though he were fully convinced that this soul of his should one day be called to console or gladden a God. When we think of preparing our soul, the preparation should never be other than befits a mission divine. In this domain only, and on this condition, can man truly give himself, can there be pre-eminent sacrifice. And think you that when the hour sounds the gift of a Socrates or Marcus Aurelius—who lived many lives, for many a time had they compassed their whole life around—do you think such a gift is not worth a thousand times more than what would be given by him who had never stepped over the threshold of consciousness? And if God there be, will He value sacrifice only by the weight of the blood in our body; and the blood of the heart—its virtue, its knowledge of self, its moral existence—do you think this will all go for nothing?

69. It is not by self-sacrifice that loftiness comes to the soul; but as the soul becomes loftier, sacrifice fades out of sight, as the flowers in the valley disappear from the vision of him who toils up the mountain. Sacrifice is a beautiful token of unrest; but unrest should not be nurtured within us for sake of itself. To the soul that is slowly awakening all appears sacrifice; but few things indeed are so called by the soul that at last lives the life whereof self-denial, pity, devotion, are no longer indispensable roots, but only invisible flowers. For in truth too many do thus feel the need of destroying—though it be without cause—a happiness, love, or a hope that is theirs, thereby to obtain clearer vision of self in the light of the consuming flame. It is as though they held in their hand a lamp of whose use they know nothing; as though, when the darkness comes on, and they are eager for light, they scatter its substance abroad on the fire of the stranger.

Let us beware lest we act as he did in the fable, who stood watch in the lighthouse, and gave to the poor in the cabins about him the oil of the mighty lanterns that served to illumine the sea. Every soul in its sphere has charge of a lighthouse, for which there is more or less need. The humblest mother who allows her whole life to be crushed, to be saddened, absorbed, by the less important of her motherly duties, is giving her oil to the poor; and her children will suffer, the whole of their life, from there not having been, in the soul of their mother, the radiance it might have acquired. The immaterial force that shines in our heart must shine, first of all, for itself; for on this condition alone shall it shine for the others as well; but see that you give not away the oil of your lamp, though your lamp be never so small; let your gift be the flame, its crown.

70. In the soul that is noble altruism must, without doubt, be always the centre of gravity; but the weak soul is apt to lose itself in others, whereas it is in others that the strong soul discovers itself. Here we have the essential distinction. There is a thing that is loftier still than to love our neighbour as we love ourselves; it is to love ourselves in our neighbour. Some souls there are whom goodness walks before, as there are others that goodness follows. Let us never forget that, in communion of soul, the most generous by no means are they who believe they are constantly giving. A strenuous soul never ceases to take, though it be from the poorest; a weak soul always is giving, even to those that have most; but there is a manner of giving which truly is only the gesture of powerless greed; and we should find, it may be, if reckoning were kept by a God, that in taking from others we give, and in giving we take away. Often indeed will it so come about that the very first ray of enlightenment will descend on the commonplace soul the day it has met with another which took all that it had to give.

71. Why not admit that it is not our paramount duty to weep with all those who are weeping, to suffer with all who are sad, to expose our heart to the passer-by for him to caress or stab? Tears and suffering and wounds are helpful to us only when they do not discourage our life. Let us never forget that whatever our mission may be in this world, whatever the aim of our efforts and hopes, and the result of our joys and our sorrows, we are, above all, the blind custodians of life. Absolutely, wholly certain is that one thing only; it is there that we find the only fixed point of human morality. Life has been given us—for a reason we know not—but surely not for us to enfeeble it, or carelessly fling it away. For it is a particular form of life that we represent on this planet— the life of feeling and thought; whence it follows perhaps that all that inclines to weaken the ardour of feeling and thought is, in its essence, immoral. Our task let it be then to foster this ardour, to enhance and embellish it; let us constantly strive to acquire deeper faith in the greatness of man, in his strength and his destiny; or, we might equally say, in his bitterness, weakness, and wretchedness; for to be loftily wretched is no less soul-quickening than it is to be loftily happy. After all, it matters but little whether it be man or the universe that we admire, so long as something appear truly admirable to us, and exalt our sense of the infinite. Every new star that is found in the sky will lend of its rays to the passions, and thoughts, and the courage, of man. Whatever of beauty we see in all that surrounds us, within us already is beautiful; whatever we find in ourselves that is great and adorable, that do we find too in others. If my soul, on awaking this morning, was cheered, as it dwelt on its love, by a thought that drew near to a God—a God, we have said, who is doubtless no more than the loveliest desire of our soul—then shall I behold this same thought astir in the beggar who passes my window the moment thereafter; and I shall love him the more for that I understand him the better. And let us not think that love of this kind can be useless; for indeed, if one day we shall know the thing that has to be done, it will only be thanks to the few who love in this fashion, with an ever- deepening love. From the conscious and infinite love must the true morality spring, nor can there be greater charity than the effort to ennoble our fellows. But I cannot ennoble you if I have not become noble myself; I have no admiration to give you if there be naught in myself I admire. If the deed I have done be heroic, its truest reward will be my conviction that of an equal deed you are capable too; this conviction ever will tend to become more spontaneous within me, and more unconquerable. Every thought that quickens my heart brings quickening, too, to the love and respect that I have for mankind. As I rise aloft, you rise with me. But if, the better to love you, I deem it my duty to tear off the wings from my love, your love being wingless as yet; then shall I have added in vain to the plaints and the tears in the valley, but brought my own love thereby not one whit nearer the mountain. Our love should always be lodged on the highest peak we can attain. Let our love not spring from pity when it can be born of love; let us not forgive for charity's sake when justice offers forgiveness; nor let us try to console there where we can respect. Let our one never-ceasing care be to better the love that we offer our fellows. One cup of this love that is drawn from the spring on the mountain is worth a hundred taken from the stagnant well of ordinary charity. And if there be one whom you no longer can love because of the pity you feel, or the tears that he sheds; and if he ignore to the end that you love him because you ennobled him at the same time you ennobled yourself, it matters but little after all; for you have done what you held to be best, and the best is not always most useful. Should we not invariably act in this life as though the God whom our heart desires with its highest desire were watching our every action?

72. In a terrible catastrophe that took place but a short time ago, [Footnote: The fire at the Bazar de la Charite in Paris.] destiny afforded yet another, and perhaps the most startling instance of what it pleases men to term her injustice, her blindness, or her irresponsibility. She seemed to have singled out for especial chastisement the solitary external virtue that reason has left us—our love for our fellow-man. There must have been some moderately righteous men amongst the victims, and it seems almost certain that there was at least one whose virtue was wholly disinterested and sincere. It is the presence of this one truly good man that warrants our asking, in all its simplicity, the terrible question that rises to our lips. Had he not been there we might have tried to believe that this act of seemingly monstrous injustice was in reality composed of particles of sovereign justice. We might have whispered to ourselves that what they termed charity, out yonder, was perhaps only the arrogant flower of permanent injustice.

We seem unwilling to recognise the blindness of the external forces, such as air, fire, water, the laws of gravity and others, with which we must deal and do battle. The need is heavy upon us to find excuses for fate; and even when blaming her, we seem to be endeavouring still to explain the causes of her past and her future action, conscious the while of a feeling of pained surprise, as though a man we valued highly had done some dreadful deed. We love to idealise destiny, and are wont to credit her with a sense of justice loftier far than our own; and however great the injustice whereof she may have been guilty, our confidence will soon flow back to her, the first feeling of dismay over; for in our heart we plead that she must have reasons we cannot fathom, that there must be laws we cannot divine. The gloom of the world would crush us were we to dissociate morality from fate. To doubt the existence of this high, protecting justice and virtue, would seem to us to be denying the existence of all justice and of all virtue.

We are no longer able to accept the narrow morality of positive religion, which entices with reward and threatens with punishment; and yet we are apt to forget that, were fate possessed of the most rudimentary sense of justice, our conception of a lofty, disinterested morality would fade into thin air. What merit in being just ourselves if we be not convinced of the absolute injustice of fate? We no longer believe in the ideals once held by saints, and we are confident that a wise God will hold of as little account the duty done through hope of recompense, as the evil done for sake of gain; and this even though the recompense hoped for be nothing but the self-ensuing peace of mind. We say that God, who must be at least as high as the highest thoughts He has implanted in the best of men, will withhold His smile from those who have desired but to please Him; and that they only who have done good for the sake of good and as though He existed not, they only who have loved virtue more than they loved God Himself, shall be allowed to stand by His side. And yet, and for all this, no sooner does the event confront us, than we discover that we still are guided by the "moral maxims" of our childhood. Of more avail would be a "List of chastised virtues." The soul that is quick with life would find its profit therein; the cause of virtue would gain in vigour and in majesty. Let us not forget that it is from the very nonmorality of destiny that a nobler morality must spring into life; for here, as everywhere, man is never so strong with his own native strength as when he realises that he stands entirely alone. As we consider the crowning injustice of fate, it is the negation of high moral law that disturbs us; but from this negation there at once arises a moral law that is higher still. He who no longer believes in reward or punishment must do good for the sake of good. Even though a moral law seem on the eve of disappearing, we need have no cause for disquiet; its place will be speedily filled by a law that is greater still. To attribute morality to fate is but to lessen the purity of our ideal; to admit the injustice of fate is to throw open before us the ever-widening fields of a still loftier morality. Let us not think virtue will crumble, though God Himself seem unjust. Where shall the virtue of man find more everlasting foundation than in the seeming injustice of God?

73. Let us not cavil, therefore, at nature's indifference to the sage. It is only because we are not yet wise enough that this indifference seems strange; for the first duty of wisdom is to throw into light the humbleness of the place in the universe that is filled by man.

Within his sphere he seems of importance, as the bee in its cell of honey; but it were idle to suppose that a single flower the more will blossom in the fields because the queen bee has proved herself a heroine in the hive. We need not fear that we depreciate ourselves when we extol the universe. Whether it be ourselves or the entire world that we consider great, still will there quicken within our soul the sense of the infinite, which is of the life-blood of virtue. What is an act of virtue that we should expect such mighty reward? It is within ourselves that reward must be found, for the law of gravitation will not swerve. They only who know not what goodness is are ever clamouring for the wage of goodness. Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is of itself always an act of happiness. It is the flower of a long inner life of joy and contentment; it tells of peaceful hours and days on the sunniest heights of our soul. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it. The upright man who perished in the catastrophe I mentioned was there because his soul had found a peace and strength in virtue that not happiness, love, or glory could have given him. Were the flames to retreat before such men, were the waters to open and death to hesitate, what were righteousness or heroism then? Would not the true happiness of virtue be destroyed? virtue that is happy because it is noble and pure, that is noble and pure because it desires no reward? There may be human joy in doing good with definite purpose, but they who do good expecting nothing in return know a joy that is divine. Where we do evil our reasons mostly are known to us, but our good deed becomes the purer for our ignorance of its motive. Would we know how to value the righteous man, we have but to question him as to the motives of his righteousness. He will probably be the most truly righteous who is least ready with his answer. Some may suppose that as intellect widens many a motive for heroism will be lost to the soul; but it should be borne in mind that the wider intellect brings with it an ideal of heroism loftier and more disinterested still. And this much at least is certain: he who thinks that virtue stands in need of the approval of destiny or of worlds, has not yet within him the veritable sense of virtue. Truly to act well we must do good because of our craving for good, a more intimate knowledge of goodness being all we expect in return. "With no witness save his heart alone," said St. Just. In the eyes of a God there must surely be marked distinction between the soul of the man who believes that the rays of a virtuous deed shall shine through furthest space, and the soul of the other who knows they illumine his heart alone. There may be greater momentary strength in the overambitious truth, but the strength that is brought by the humble human truth is far more earnest and patient. Is it wiser to be as the soldier who imagines that each blow he strikes brings victory nearer, or as the other who knows his little account in the combat but still fights sturdily on? The upright man would scorn to deceive his neighbour, but is ever unduly inclined to regard some measure of self- deception as inseparable from his ideal.

If there were profit in virtue, then would the noblest of men be compelled to seek happiness elsewhere; and God would destroy their main object in life were He to reward them often. Nothing is indispensable, perhaps, or even necessary; and it may be that if the joy of doing good for sake of good were taken from the soul, it would find other, purer joys; but in the meantime, it is the most beautiful joy we know, therefore let us respect it. Let us not resent the misfortunes that sometimes befall virtue, lest we at the same time disturb the limpid essence of its happiness. The soul that has this happiness dreams no more of reward, than others expect punishment because of their wickedness. They only are ever clamouring for justice who know it not in their lives.

74. There is wisdom in the Hindu saying: "Work as they work, who are ambitious. Respect life, as they respect it who desire it. Be happy, as they are happy who live for happiness alone."

And this is indeed the central point of human wisdom—to act as though each deed must bear wondrous, everlasting, fruit, and yet to realise the insignificance of a just action before the universe; to grasp the disproportion of things, and yet to march onwards as though the proportions were established by man; to keep our eyes fixed on the great sphere, and ourselves to move in the little sphere with as much confidence and earnestness, with as much assurance and satisfaction, as though the great sphere were contained within it.

Is there need of illusion to keep alive our desire for good? then must this desire stand confessed as foreign to the nature of man. It is a mistake to imagine that the heart will long cherish within it the ideas that reason has banished; but within the heart there is much that reason may take to itself. And at last the heart becomes the refuge to which reason is apt to fly, ever more and more simply, each time that the night steals upon it; for it is to the heart as a young, clairvoyant girl, who still at times needs advice from her blind, but smiling, mother. There comes a moment in life when moral beauty seems more urgent, more penetrating, than intellectual beauty; when all that the mind has treasured must be bathed in the greatness of soul, lest it perish in the sandy desert, forlorn as a river that seeks in vain for the sea.

75. But let us exaggerate nothing when dealing with wisdom, though it be wisdom itself. The external forces, we know, will not yield to the righteous man; but still he is absolute lord of most of the inner powers; and these are for ever spinning the web of nearly all our happiness and sorrow. We have said elsewhere that the sage, as he passes by, intervenes in countless dramas. Indeed his mere presence suffices to arrest most of the calamities that arise from error or evil. They cannot approach him, or even those who are near him. A chance meeting with creature endowed with simple and loving wisdom has stayed the hands of men who else had committed countless acts of folly or wickedness; for in life most characters are subordinate, and it is chance alone that determines whether the track which they are to follow shall be that of suffering or peace. The atmosphere around Jean-Jacques Rousseau was heavy with lamentation and treachery, delirium, deceit, and cunning; whereas Jean Paul moved in the midst of loyalty and nobility, the centre of peace and love. We subdue that in others which we have learned to subdue in ourselves. Around the upright man there is drawn a wide circle of peace, within which the arrows of evil soon cease to fall; nor have his fellows the power to inflict moral suffering upon him. For indeed if our tears can flow because of our enemies' malice, it is only because we ourselves would fain make our enemies weep. If the shafts of envy can wound and draw blood, it is only because we ourselves have shafts that we wish to throw; if treachery can wring a groan from us, we must be disloyal ourselves, Only those weapons can wound the soul that it has not yet sacrificed on the altar of Love.

76. The dramas of virtue are played on a stage whose mysteries not even the wisest can fathom. It is only as the last word is spoken that the curtain is raised for an instant; we know nothing of all that preceded, of the brightness or gloom that enwrapped it. But of one thing at least the just man may be certain; it will be in an act of charity, or justice, that his destiny will meet him face to face. The blow must inevitably find him prepared, in a state of grace, as the Christian calls it; in other words, in a state of inner happiness. And that in itself bars the door on evil destiny within us, and closes most of the gates by which external misfortune can enter. As our conception of duty and happiness gains in dignity, so does the sway of moral suffering become the more restricted and purer. And is not moral suffering the most tyrannical weapon in the armoury of destiny? Our happiness mainly depends on the freedom that reigns within us; a freedom that widens with every good deed, and contracts beneath acts of evil. Not metaphorically, but literally, does Marcus Aurelius free himself each time he discovers a new truth in indulgence, each time that he pardons, each time he reflects. Still less of a metaphor is it to declare that Macbeth enchains himself anew with every fresh crime. And if this be true of the great crimes of kings and the virtues of heroes, it is no less true of the humblest faults and most hidden virtues of ordinary life. Many a youthful Marcus Aurelius is still about us; many a Macbeth, who never stirs from his room. However imperfect our conception of virtue, still let us cling to it; for a moment's forgetfulness exposes us to all the malignant forces from without. The simplest lie to myself, buried though it may be in the silence of my soul, may yet be as dangerous to my inner liberty as an act of treachery on the marketplace. And from the moment that my inner liberty is threatened, destiny prowls around my external liberty as stealthily as a beast of prey that has long been tracking its victim.

77. Can we conceive a situation in life wherein a man who is truly wise and noble can be made to suffer as profoundly as the man who follows evil? In this world it is far more certain that vice will be punished, than that virtue will meet with reward; yet we must bear in mind that it is the habit of crime to shriek aloud beneath its punishment, whereas virtue rewards itself in the silence that is the walled garden of its happiness. Evil drags horrid catastrophe behind it; but an act of virtue is only a silent offering to the profoundest laws of life; and therefore, doubtless, does the balance of mighty justice seem more ready to incline beneath deeds of darkness than beneath those of light. But if we can scarcely believe that "happiness in crime" be possible, have we more warrant for faith in the "unhappiness of virtue"? We know that the executioner can stretch Spinoza on the rack, and that terrible disease will spare Antoninus Pius no more than Goneril or Regan; but pain such as this belongs to the animal, not the human, side of man. Wisdom has indeed sent science, the youngest of her sisters, into the realm of destiny, with the mission to bring the zone of physical suffering within ever-narrowing limits; but there are inaccessible regions within that realm, where disaster ever will rule. Some stricken ones there will always be, victims to irreducible injustice; and yet will the true wisdom, in the midst of its sorrow, only be fortified thereby, only gain in self-reliance and humanity all that it, may lose in more mystic qualities. We become truly just only when it is finally borne home to us that we must search within ourselves for our model of justice. Again, it is the injustice of destiny that restores man to his place in the universe. It is not well that he should for ever be pasting anxious glances about him, like the child that has strayed from its mother's side. Nor need we believe that these disillusions must necessarily give rise to moral discouragement; for the truth that seems discouraging does in reality only transform the courage of those strong enough to accept it; and, in any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods. But indeed no truth can discourage, whereas much that passes as courage only bears the semblance thereof. The thing that enfeebles the weak will but help to strengthen the strong. "Do you remember the day," wrote a woman to her lover, "when we sat together by the window that looked on to the sea, and watched the meek procession of white-sailed ships as they followed each other into harbour? . . . Ah! how that day comes back to me! . . . Do you remember that one ship had a sail that was nearly black, and that she was the last to come in? And do you remember, too, that the hour of separation was upon us, and that the arrival of the last boat of all was to be our signal for departure? We might perhaps have found cause for sadness in the gloomy sail that fluttered at her mast; but we who loved each other had 'accepted' life, and we only smiled as we once more recognised the kinship of our thoughts." Yes, it is thus we should act; and though we cannot always smile as the black sail heaves in sight, yet is it possible for us to find in our life something that shall absorb us to the exclusion of sadness, as her love absorbed the woman whose words I have quoted. Complaints of injustice grow less frequent as the brain and the heart expand. It is well to remind ourselves that in this world, whose fruit we are, all that concerns us must necessarily be more conformable with our existence than the most beneficent law of our imagination. The time has arrived perhaps when man must learn to place the centre of his joys and pride elsewhere than within himself. As this idea takes firmer root within us, so do we become more conscious of our helplessness beneath its overwhelming force; yet is it at the same time borne home to us that of this force we ourselves form part; and even as we writhe beneath it, we are compelled to admire, as the youthful Telemachus admired the power of his father's arm. Our own instinctive actions awaken within us an eager curiosity, an affectionate, pleased surprise: why should we not train ourselves thus to regard the instinctive actions of nature? We love to throw the dim light of our reason on to our unconsciousness: why not let it play on what we term the unconsciousness of the universe? We are no less deeply concerned with the one than the other. "After he has become acquainted with the power that is in him," said a philosopher, "one of the highest privileges of man is to realise his individual powerlessness. Out of the very disproportion between the infinite which kills us and this nothing that we are, there arises within us a sensation that is not without grandeur; we feel that we would rather be crushed by a mountain than done to death by a pebble, as in war we would rather succumb beneath the charge of thousands than fall victim to a single arm. And as our intellect lays bare to us the immensity of our helplessness, so does it rob defeat of its sting." Who knows? We are already conscious of moments when the something that has conquered us seems nearer to ourselves than the part of us that has yielded. Of all our characteristics, self-esteem is the one that most readily changes its home, for we are instinctively aware that it has never truly formed part of us. The self-esteem of the courtier who waits on the mighty king soon finds more splendid lodging in the king's boundless power; and the disgrace that may befall him will wound his pride the less for that it has descended from the height of a throne. Were nature to become less indifferent, it would no longer appear so vast. Our unfettered sense of the infinite cannot afford to dispense with one particle of the infinite, with one particle of its indifference; and there will ever remain something within our soul that would rather weep at times in a world that knows no limit, than enjoy perpetual happiness in a world that is hemmed in.

If destiny were invariably just in her dealings with the wise, then doubtless would the existence of such a law furnish sufficient proof of its excellence; but as it is wholly indifferent, it is better so, and perhaps even greater; for what the actions of the soul may lose in importance thereby does but go to swell the dignity of the universe. And loss of grandeur to the sage there is none; for he is as profoundly sensitive to the greatness of nature as to the greatness that lurks within man. Why harass our soul with endeavour to locate the infinite? As much of it as can be given to man will go to him who has learned to wonder.

78. Do you know a novel of Balzac, belonging to the "Celibataires" series, called Pierrette? It is not one of Balzac's masterpieces, but it has points of much interest for us. It is the story of an orphaned Breton girl, a sweet, innocent child, who is suddenly snatched away, by her evil star, from the grandparents who adore her, and transferred to the care of an aunt and uncle. Monsieur Rogron and his sister Sylvia. A hard, gloomy couple, these two; retired shopkeepers, who live in a dreary house in the back streets of a dreary country town. Their celibacy weighs heavily upon them; they are miserly, and absurdly vain; morose, and instinctively full of hatred.

The poor inoffensive girl has hardly set foot in the house before her martyrdom begins. There are terrible questions of money and economy, ambitions to be gratified, marriages to be prevented, inheritances to be turned aside: complications of every kind. The neighbours and friends of the Rogrons behold the long and painful sufferings of the victim with unruffled tranquillity, for their every natural instinct leads them to applaud the success of the stronger. And at last Pierrette dies, as unhappily as she has lived; while the others all triumph—the Rogrons, the detestable lawyer Vinet, and all those who had helped them; and the subsequent happiness of these wretches remains wholly untroubled. Fate would even seem to smile upon them; and Balzac, carried away in spite of himself by the reality of it all, ends his story, almost regretfully, with these words: "How the social villainies of this world would thrive under our laws if there were no God!"

We need not go to fiction for tragedies of this kind; there are many houses in which they are matters of daily occurrence. I have borrowed this instance from Balzac's pages because the story lay there ready to hand; the chronicle, day by day, of the triumph of injustice. The very highest morality is served by such instances, and a great lesson is taught; and perhaps the moralists are wrong who try to weaken this lesson by finding excuses for the iniquities of fate. Some are satisfied that God will give innocence its due reward. Others tell us that in this case it is not the victim who has the greatest claim upon our sympathy. And these are doubtless right, from many points of view; for little Pierrette, miserable though she was, and cruelly tormented, did yet experience joys that her tyrants never would know. In the midst of her sorrow, she remained gentle, and tender, and loving; and therein lies greater happiness than in hiding cruelty, hatred, and selfishness beneath a smile. It is sad to love and be unloved, but sadder still to be unable to love. And how great is the difference between the petty, sordid desires, the grotesque delights, of the Rogrons, and the mighty longing that filled the child's soul as she looked forward to the time when injustice at last should cease! Little wistful Pierrette was perhaps no wiser than those about her; but before such as must bear unmerited suffering there stretches a wide horizon, which here and again takes in the joys that only the loftiest know; even as the horizon of the earth, though not seen from the mountain peak, would appear at times to be one with the corner-stone of heaven. The injustice we commit speedily reduces us to petty, material pleasures; but, as we revel in these, we envy our victim; for our tyranny has thrown open the door to joys whereof we cannot deprive him—joys that are wholly beyond our reach, joys that are purely spiritual. And the door that opens wide to the victim is sealed in the tyrant's soul; and the sufferer breathes a purer air than he who has made him suffer. In the hearts of the persecuted there is radiance, where those who persecute have only gloom; and is it not on the light within us that the wellbeing of happiness depends? He who brings sorrow with him stifles more happiness within himself than in the man he overwhelms. Which of us, had he to choose, but would rather be Pierrette than Rogron? The instinct of happiness within us needs no telling that he who is morally right must be happier than he who is wrong, though the wrong be done from the height of a throne. And, even though the Rogrons be unaware of their Injustice, it alters nothing; for, be we aware or unaware of the evil we commit, the air we breathe will still be heavily charged. Nay, more—to him who knows he does wrong there may come, perhaps, the desire to escape from his prison; but the other will die in his cell, without even his thoughts having travelled beyond the gloomy walls that conceal from him the true destiny of man.

79. Why seek justice where it cannot be? and where can it be, save in our soul? Its language is the natural language of the spirit of man; but this spirit must learn new words ere it can travel in the universe. Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention; and what we term justice is truly nothing but this equilibrium transformed, as honey is nothing but a transformation of the sweetness found in the flower. Outside man there is no justice; within him injustice cannot be. The body may revel in ill—gotten pleasure, but virtue alone can bring contentment to the soul. Our inner happiness is measured out to us by an incorruptible Judge and the mere endeavour to corrupt him still further reduces the sum of the final, veritable happiness he lets fall into the shining scale. It is lamentable enough that a Rogron should be able to torture a helpless child, and darken the few hours of life the chance of the world had given; but injustice there would be only if his wickedness procured him the inner happiness and peace, the elevation of thought and habit, that long years spent in love and meditation had procured for Spinoza and Marcus Aurelius. Some slight intellectual satisfaction there may be in the doing of evil; but none the less does each wrongful deed clip the wings of our thoughts, till at length they can only crawl amidst all that is fleeting and personal. To commit an act of injustice is to prove we have not yet attained the happiness within our grasp. And in evil—reduce things to their primal elements, and you shall find that even the wicked are seeking some measure of peace, a certain up-lifting of soul. They may think themselves happy, and rejoice for such dole as may come to them; but would it have satisfied Marcus Aurelius, who knew the lofty tranquillity, the great quickening of the soul? Show a vast lake to the child who has never beheld the sea, it will clap its hands and be glad, and think the sea is before it; but therefore none the less does the veritable sea exist.

It may be that a man will find happiness in the puny little victories that his vanity, envy, or indifference win for him day after day. Shall we begrudge him such happiness, we, whose eyes can see further? Shall we strive for his consciousness of life, for the religion that pleases his soul, for the conception of the universe that justifies his cares? Yet out of these things are the banks made between which happiness flows; and as they are, so shall the river be, in shallowness or in depth. He may believe that there is a God, or that there is no God; that all ends in this world, or that it is prolonged into the next; that all is matter, or that all is spirit. He will believe these things much as wise men believe them; but do you think his manner of belief can be the same? To look fearlessly upon life; to accept the laws of nature, not with meek resignation, but as her sons, who dare to search and question; to have peace and confidence within our soul—these are the beliefs that make for happiness. But to believe is not enough; all depends on how we believe. I may believe that there is no God, that I am self- contained, that my brief sojourn here serves no purpose; that in the economy of this world without limit my existence counts for as little as the evanescent hue of a flower—I may believe all this, in a deeply religious spirit, with the infinite throbbing within me; you may believe in one all-powerful God, who cherishes and protects you, yet your belief may be mean, and petty, and small. I shall be happier than you, and calmer, if my doubt is greater, and nobler, and more earnest than is your faith; if it has probed more deeply into my soul, traversed wider horizons, if there are more things it has loved. And if the thoughts and feelings on which my doubt reposes have become vaster and purer than those that support your faith, then shall the God of my disbelief become mightier and of supremer comfort than the God to whom you cling. For, indeed, belief and unbelief are mere empty words; not so the loyalty, the greatness and profoundness of the reasons wherefore we believe or do not believe.

80. We do not choose these reasons; they are rewards that have to be earned. Those we have chosen are only slaves we have happened to buy; and their life is but feeble; they hold themselves shyly aloof, ever watching for a chance to escape. But the reasons we have deserved stand faithfully by us; they are so many pensive Antigones, on whose help we may ever rely. Nor can such reasons as these be forcibly lodged in the soul; for indeed they must have dwelt there from earliest days, have spent their childhood there, nourished on our every thought and action; and tokens recalling a life of devotion and love must surround them on every side. And as they throw deeper root—as the mists clear away from our soul and reveal a still wider horizon. so does the horizon of happiness widen also; for it is only in the space that our thoughts and our feelings enclose that our happiness can breathe in freedom. It demands no material space, but finds ever too narrow the spiritual fields we throw open; wherefore we must unceasingly endeavour to enlarge its territory, until such time as, soaring up on high, it finds sufficient aliment in the space which it does of itself fling open. Then it is, and then only, that happiness truly illumines the most eternal, most human part of man; and indeed all other forms of happiness are merely unconscious fragments of this great happiness, which, as it reflects and looks before it, is conscious of no limit within itself or in all that surrounds it.

81. This space must dwindle daily in those who follow evil, seeing that their thoughts and feelings must of necessity dwindle also. But the man who has risen somewhat will soon forsake the ways of evil; for look deep down enough and you shall ever find its origin in straitened feeling and stunted thought. He does evil no longer, because his thoughts are purer and higher; and now that he is incapable of evil, his thoughts will become purer still. And thus do our thoughts and actions, having won their way into the placid heaven where no barrier restrains the soul, become as inseparable as the wings of a bird; and what to the bird was only a law of equilibrium is here transformed into a law of justice.

82. Who can tell whether the satisfaction derived from evil can ever penetrate to the soul, unless there mingle with it a vague desire, a promise, a distant hope, of goodness or of pity?

The joy of the wretch whose victim lies in his power is perhaps unredeemed in its gloom and futility, save by the thought of mercy that flashes across him. Evil at times would seem compelled to beg a ray of light from virtue, to shed lustre on its triumph. Is it possible for a man to smile in his hatred and not borrow the smile of love? But the smile will be short-lived, for here, as everywhere, there is no inner injustice. Within the soul the high-water mark of happiness is always level with that of justice or charity—which words I use here indifferently, for indeed what is charity or love but justice with naught to do but count its jewels? The man who goes forth to seek his happiness in evil does merely prove thereby that he is less happy than the other who watches, and disapproves. And yet his object is identical with that of the upright man. He too is in search of happiness, of some sort of peace and certainty. Of what avail to punish him? We do not blame the poor because their home is not a palace; it is sad enough to be compelled to live in a hovel. He whose eyes can see the invisible, knows that in the soul of the most unjust man there is justice still: justice, with all her attributes, her stainless garments and holy activity. He knows that the soul of the sinner is ever balancing peace and love, and the consciousness of life, no less scrupulously than the soul of philosopher, saint, or hero; that it watches the smiles of earth— and sky, and is no less aware of all whereby those smiles are destroyed, degraded, and poisoned. We are not wrong, perhaps, to be heedful of justice in the midst of a universe that heeds not at all; as the bee is not wrong to make honey in a world that itself can make none. But we are wrong to desire an external justice, since we know that it does not exist. Let that which is in us suffice. All is for ever being weighed and judged in our soul. It is we who shall judge ourselves; or rather, our happiness is our judge.

83. It may be urged that virtue is subject to defeat and disappointment, no less than vice; but the defeats and disappointments of virtue bring with them no gloom or distress, for they do but tend to soothe and enlighten our thoughts. An act of virtue may sink into the void, but it is then, most of all, that we learn to gauge the depths of life and of soul; and often will it fall into these depths like a radiant stone, beside which our thoughts loom pale. With every vicious scheme that fails before the innocence of Pierrette, Madame Rogron's soul shrivels anew; whereas the clemency of Titus, falling on thankless soil, docs but induce him to lift his eyes on high, far beyond love or pardon. There is no gain in shutting out the world, though it be with walls of righteousness. The last gesture of virtue should be that of an angel flinging open the door. We should welcome our disillusions; for were it the will of destiny that our pardon should always transform an enemy into a brother, then should we go to our grave still unaware of all that springs to light within us beneath the act of unwise clemency, whose unwisdom we never regret. We should die without once having matched all that is best in our soul against the forces that hedge life around. The kindly deed that is wasted, the lofty or only loyal thought that falls on barren ground—these too have their value, for the light they throw differs far from the radiance triumphant virtue suffuses; and thus may we see many things in their differing aspect. There were surely much joy in the thought that love must invariably triumph; but greater joy is there still in tearing aside this illusion, am marching straight on to the truth. "Man has been but too prone," said a philosopher, whom death carried off too soon—"man has been but too prone, through all the course of his history, to lodge his dignity within his errors, and to look upon truth as a thing that depreciated himself. It may sometimes seem less glorious than illusion, but it has the advantage of being true. In the whole domain of thought there is nothing loftier than truth." And there is no bitterness herein, for indeed to the sage truth can never be bitter. He, too, has had his longings in the past, has conceived that truth might move mountains, that a loving act might for ever soften the hearts of men; but to-day he has learned to prefer that this should not be so. Nor is it overweening pride that thus has changed him; he does not think himself more virtuous than the universe; it is his insignificance in the universe that has been made clear to him. It is no longer for the spiritual fruit it bears that he tends the love of justice he has found implanted in his soul, but for the living flowers that spring up within him, and because of his deep respect for all created things. He has no curses for the ungrateful friend, nor even for ingratitude itself. He does not say, "I am better than that man," or "I shall not fall into that vice." But he is taught by ingratitude that benevolence contains joys that are greater than those that gratitude can bestow; joys that are less personal, but more in harmony with life as a whole. He finds more pleasure in the attempt to understand that which is, than in the struggle to believe that which he desires. For a long time he has been like the beggar who was suddenly borne away from his hut and lodged in a magnificent palace. He awoke and threw uneasy glances about him, seeking, in that immense hall, for the squalid things he remembered to have had in his tiny room. Where were the hearth, the bed, the table, stool, and basin? The humble torch of his vigils still trembled by his side, but its light could not reach the lofty ceiling. The little wings of flame threw their feeble flicker on to a pillar close by, which was all that stood out from the darkness. But little by little his eyes grew accustomed to his new abode. He wandered through room after room, and rejoiced as profoundly at all that his torch left in darkness as at all that it threw into light. At first he could have wished in his heart that the doors had been somewhat less lofty, the staircases not quite so ample, the galleries less lost in gloom; but as he went straight before him, he felt all the beauty and grandeur of that which was yet so unlike the home of his dream. He rejoiced to discover that here bed and table were not the centre round which all revolved, as it had been with him in his hut. He was glad that the palace had not been built to conform with the humble habits his misery had forced upon him. He even learned to admire the things that defeated his hopes, for they enabled his eyes to see deeper. The sage is consoled and fortified by everything that exists, for indeed it is of the essence of wisdom to seek out all that exists, and to admit it within its circle.

84. Wisdom even admits the Rogrons; for she holds life of profounder interest than even justice or virtue; and where her attention is disputed by a virtue lost in abstraction, and by a humble, walled-in life, she will incline to the humble life, and not to the magnificent virtue that holds itself proudly aloof. It is of the nature of wisdom to despise nothing; indeed, in this world there is perhaps only one thing truly contemptible, and that thing is contempt itself. Thinkers too often are apt to despise those who go through life without thinking. Thought is doubtless of high value; our first endeavour should be to think as often and as well as we can; but, for all that, it is somewhat beside the mark to believe that the possession, or lack, of a certain faculty for handling general ideas can interpose an actual barrier between men. After all, the difference between the greatest thinker and the smallest provincial burgher is often only the difference between a truth that can sometimes express itself and a truth that can never crystallise into form. The difference is considerable—a gap, but not a chasm. The higher our thoughts ascend, the vainer and the more arbitrary seems the distinction between him who is thinking always and him who thinks not yet. The little burgher is full of prejudice and of passions at which we smile; his ideas are small and petty, and sometimes contemptible enough; and yet, place him side by side with the sage, before essential circumstance of life, before love, grief, death, before something that calls for true heroism, and it shall happen more than once that the sage will turn to his humble companion as to the guardian of a truth no less profound, no less deeply human, than his own. There are moments when the sage realises, that his spiritual treasures are naught; that it is only a few words, or habits, that divide him from other men; there are moments when he even doubts the value of those words. Those are the moments when wisdom flowers and sends forth blossom. Thought may sometimes deceive; and the thinker who goes astray must often retrace his footsteps to the spot whence those who think not have never moved away, where they still remain faithfully seated round the silent, essential truth. They are the guardians of the watch- fires of the tribe; the others take lighted torches and go wandering abroad; but when the air grows heavy and threatens the feeble flame, then is it well to turn back and draw close to the watch-fires once more. These fires seem never to stir from the spot where they always have been; but in truth they ever are moving, keeping time with the worlds; and their flame marks the hour of humanity on the dial of the universe. We know exactly how much the inert forces owe to the thinker; we forget the deep indebtedness of the thinker to inert force. In a world where all were thinkers, more than one indispensable truth might perhaps for ever be lost. For indeed the thinker must never lose touch with those who do not think, as his thoughts would then quickly cease to be just or profound. To disdain is only too easy, not so to understand; but in him who is truly wise there passes no thought of disdain, but it will, sooner or later, evolve into full comprehension. The thought that can travel scornfully over the heads of that great silent throng without recognising its myriad brothers and sisters that are slumbering there in its midst, is only too often merely a sterile, vicious dream. We do well to remind ourselves at times that the spiritual, no less than the physical, atmosphere demands more nitrogen than oxygen for the air to be breathed by man.