A FUTURIST ON THE FUTURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15962, 3 January 1914, Page 14

A FUTURIST ON THE FUTURE.

MAETERLINCK'S "OUB ETERNITY,

' (By Constant Readeb.) i " Maeterlinck is an antagonist of Christianity ; and yet perhaps the majority of his admirers are those who love him because he has such beautiful things to tell them their immortal souls. . . . Maelcirlinck is a Socialist if you look away from it-he din of tho mere present to the future his writings undoubtedly prepareMaetorlinck is first and foremost a futurist, a seer of the future. . . . The fact of Maeterlinck's vogue with Christian readers only proves thai Christianity has much in common, with tho religion of the future." This, from Mr Jethro Bithell's " Lifij' and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck,'' serves as introduction to some thoughts on M. Maeterlinck's " Our Eternity, ' a subject eminently appropriate for consideration during the first few days of a new year. At the beginning of every year ; our thoughts instinctively turn towaids the future, and we catch ourselves almost' unconsciously speculating upon ■what■•■'that future holds for us. I lean towards Maeterlinck because he has an optimistic outlook. Moreover, as inter/ preted by Mr Jethro Bithcll, he supplies one of the links in a final reconciliation -of what at first blush appear impossible contradictions in the current of modern thought. I have sometimes wondered what jt was in men apparently so opposite as Tolstoy and Nietzsche and Maeterlinck that made to me an identical appeal. But Maeterlinck himself supplied the clue in " Our Anxious Morality," an essay in which, according to Mr Jethro Bithell, he " strides over dead religions to hold out a hand of welcome to the religion of the future." This is what Maeterlinck says in explanation of that stride; — •■We have arrived at a stage of human evolution that must be almost unprecedented in history. A large portion of mankind—and just that portion which corresponds with the part that has hitherto created the events of which we. know with some certainty—is gradually forsaking the religion in which it has lived for nearly twenty centuries. •"•For a. religion to become extinct is nri new thing. It must have happened mil re than once in the night of time; and the annalists of the end of the Roman Empire make us assist at the deJith of paganism. But until now men passed from a crumbling temple into one that was building—they left one religion to enter another; whereas we are abandoning ours to go nowhither. TTjat. is the new phenomenon, with the unknown consequences wherein we live. Placing on one side the artificial hejaven ; ii which those who remain faithful to the religious certainties take, shelter,, we find that the upper currents of-: civilised humanity waver, seemingly between two contrary doctrines. For that matter, these two parallel but inverse doctrines have through all time, like hostile streams, crossed the fields of.-,human morality. But their bed was never so clearly, so rigidly, dug out as now. That which in other days was no more than altruism and egoism, instinctive and vague, with waves that ofien mingled, has of late become altruism and egoism absolute and systematic. At their sources, which are not renewed but shifted, stand two men. of^ genius—Tolstoy and Nietzsche. But asVI have said, it is only seemingly that thfese two doctrines divide the world of i ethics. The real drama of the mbdern conscience is not enacted at either ofthese two extreme points. Lost in space, they mark little more than two illusive goals, which nobody dreams of attaining. One of these doctrines flows violently back towards a past that never existed in the shape in which that doctrine pictures; the other ripples cruelly towards a future which there is nothing to foretell. Between these two dreams ■which envelop and go beyond it on every side passes the reality of which thev have failed to take account.

One of the missions of Futurism is the ending of that specialisation which, by dividing the world of thought into so many " watertight compartments, has thrown life completely out of -nerspective. The religion of the future is to be a compact of the art, philosophy, science, and literature of the iuture. Indeed, all five forces will be so intermingled as to be inseparable. The "Futurists'' based their famous manifesto on the implied teachings of two great Flemings, Verliaeren and Maeterlinck, both of whom reached the same goal, if by different i-mites; and though, as Mr l3ithell remarks, the Futurists go to scandalous extremes, "they will do some good if they shock those'good people who feed on classic lore .into a suspicion, that new ideals have sprung into being." In a word, the Futurist draws inspiration from a future full of optimism, as opposed to a past shrouded in a. cloak of pessimism. Just as there is a. difference between yesterday and to-day, so there is as wide a gulf fixed between to-day and to-morrow. The former difference is subtly brought out by Mr Bithell, when comparing Maeterlinck's lyrics in " Serres Chaudes" with the poetry of Verhaeren : —" So incoherent and strange have these poems appeared to some people who are ardent Maeterlinckians that they assume he may for a period have been mentally ill. If he had it would have been historically significant. Verhaeren went through such a period of mental illness. It might be asserted that the modern man must be mad. The life of to-day, especially in cities, with its whipped hurry, its dust and nerves, is too complex to be with the nerves of a Victorian. But the human organism is capable of infinite assimilation, and the period we live in is busy creating a new type of man. Tt is the glory of Verhaeren to have sung the advent of this new man; it is the ' glory of Maeterlinck to have proved that a species forcibly adjusts itself to existing conditions. To a Victorian the poems in ' Serres Chaudes must of necessity seem diseased, just as a greater part of Tennyson's poetry must of necessity seem ordinary to us. How many ' Dickhauter' have called Hoffmansthal's 'poetry diseased'.'.. If it is, so is Yeats's. Turn from Robert Bridges's poems of outdoor life—the noble old English style—to Yeats's dim visions or to Arthur Symons's harpsichord dreaming through the room, and you have all the difference between yesterday and to-day." Just as '.lie moderns have discarded the past in favour of the present, so the Futurists are preparing for what is to come. And in "Our Eternity'' Maeterlinck has placed the crown upon a thesis the foundations of which were laid as long ago as 1889 in " Serres Chaudes," which was continued in 1896 and 1898 in " La Sagesse et la Destinee" and "La Vie des Abeilles, 1 ' and was brought well nigh to conclusion in 1907 in " L'lntelligence des FleuT6.'' This treatise in its present form is an extension of the essay on " Death," first published two years ago, and now, as then, including the essay on " Immortality " from "Life and Flowers," or at least as much of that essay as is essential to the development of the author's theme. The desire apparent in this latest effort of M. Maeterlinck is to destroy once and for ever in the mind of men the fear of death by infusing a clearer idea of what lies in wait beyond the grave. Commencing with a dramatic sentence from a French writer: "They call me a master, because of some magic in my speech and thoughts; but I am a frightened child in the presence of death,'' M. Maeterlinck writes: — That is where we stand. For us. death is the one event that counts in our life and in our universe. It is the point whereat al! that escapes our vigilance unites and conspires against our happiness. The more our thoughts struggle to turn away from it the closer do they press around it. The more we dread it the more dreadful it becomes, for it but thrives on our feaTs. lie who seeks to forget it has his memory filled with it: ho who tries to «•' Our Eternity." By Maurioe Maeterlinck. Translatorl by Alexander Toiiara da Matins. Loadon: Methuen and Co. (&s net.)

shun it meets naught else. It clouds everything with its shadow. But, though we think of death incessantly, we do so unconsciously, without learning to know death. We compel our attention to tnrn its back upon it instead of going t6 it with uplifted head. All the forces which might' avail to faco death we exhaust in averting our riil from it Wo deliver death into the groping hands of instinct, and we grant it not one hoar of our intelligence. Is ; t surprising that the idea of death, which should be the most perfect and the most luminous of ideas—being the most persistent and the most inevitable, —remains the flimsiest and the only one that is a laggard ? How should we know the one power which we never look in the face ? How could it have profited by gleams kindled only to help us escape' it? To fathom its abysses wc wait until the most enfeebled, the most disordered, moments of our life arrive. We do not think of death until we have no longer the strength, I will not say to think, but even to breathe. A man' returning amoug us from another country would have difficulty in recognising in the depths of a present-day soul "the image of his gods, of his uuty, of his love, or of its universe; but the figure of death when everything has changed around it, and when even that which composes it and upon which it depends lias vanished, he would find almost untouched, rough-drawn as it was bv our fathers hundreds, nay, thousands," of years ago. Our intelligence grown so bold and active has not worked upon this figure, has not, so to speak, retouched it in any way. Though we may no longer believe in the tortures of the damned, all tho vital cells of the most sceptical among us are still steeped in the appalling mystery of the Hebrew Sheol, the pagan Hades, or the Christian Hell. Though it may 110 longer be lighted by very definite flames, the gulf still opens at the end of life, and if less known is all the more formidable. And therefore, when the impending hour strikes to which wc dared not raise our eyes, everything fails us at the same time. Theee two or three uncertain ideas whereon, without examining thorn we had meant to lean give way like rushes beneath the weight of the last minutes. In vain we seek <a refuge among Reflections that are illusive or are strange to us and do not know the road to our hearts. No one awaits us on the last shore where all is unprepared, where naught remains afoot save terror.

It is well to Teflect to how large an extent the character of our religion depends upon our conception of the future. This, of course, is the justification for the manifesto of the Futurists. The reason why society and civilisation as we know it to-day are crumbling to dissolution and crying out for reconstruction is because all our standards and sanctions are founded on the traditions of a dead past; what-is now demanded is a system founded on the future. Hence the import of " Our Eternity," which, after examining and setting aside most, if not all, of the current conceptions, reaches 6omc valuable conclusions, which at least will provoke thought and provide matter for discussion. The better to appraise the weight of the argument running through " Our Eternity " it will be well to examine M. Maeterlinck's standpoint as outlined in the " Life of the Bee." There Mr BitheH's book proves very helpful. The " Life of the Bee" is an apotheosis of the cult of the future; " the god of the Bees is the future. To this future everything is subordinated with astonishing foresight, co-operation, and inflexibility." The book is, besides, a powerful epic' of brain force—another aspect of the life-force of Bernard Shaw. Mr Bithelfs interpretation is most illuminating at this

point : — 11 is clear that the .bees have will power. You may see where this will power, which is the " sjjirit of the hive/' resides if you place the careworn head of a virgin worker under the microscope; withm this little head are the circumvolutions of the vastest and the most ingenious brain of the hive, the most beautiful, the most complicated brain which is in nature after that of man. Here again, as everywhere else in the world, where the braiu

le, there is authority, the real strength, wisdom, and victory. Here, again, it is an almost invisible atom of that mysterious substance that organises and subjugates matter and is able to create for itself a little triumphant and durable place amid the stupendous and inert powers of nothingness and death. Some observers, Lord Avebury, for instance, do not estimate the intelligence of the bee as highly as Maetcriinck does, but the experiments on which they base their conclusions do not seem to Maeterlinck to be more decisive than the spectacle of the ravages of alcohol or of a battlefield would be to a superhuman observer trying to fix the limits of human intelligence. And then think of the situation of the bee in the world, by the side of a human being who is aiways upsetting the laws of its nature. How should we behave if some Higher Being should foil our wisdom ? And limv do we know there is no such Higher Being, or more than one, who might be to us as indistinguishable as man, the great ape, and the bear are to the bee? It is certain that there are within us and around us influences and powers as dissimilar and as indistinguishable. It is as interesting and as important to us to discover signs of intellect outside ourselves as it was to Robinson Crusoe to find the imprint of a human foot other than his own on the sandy beach of his island. When we study the intelligence of bees we study what is most precious in our own substance, an atom of that extraordinary matter which had the property of transfiguring blind necessity, or organising and multiplying life and making it more beautiful, of cheeking the obstinate force of death and the great irresponsible wave that rolls round in earth's diurnal course al! eternally unconscious things. This intelligence is the devouring force of the future. Do not say that mankind is deteriorating. Alcohol and syphilis, for instance, are accidents that the race will overcome, perhaps they are tests by which some of our organs, the nervous organs, for instance, will profit, for life constantly profits by the ills it surmounts. A trifle may be discovered to-morrow which will make Hi em innocuous. Confidence in life is the first of our duties. We have everything to hope from evolution. It will lessen exertion, insecurity, and wretchedness; it will increase comfort. To this end it will not hesitate to sacrifice the individual. And let us note that progress recorded by Nature is never lost. Life is a constant progression—whither, we do not know.

Maeterlinck's teaching is concentrated in a sentence or two which will be found in "The Leaf of Olive," the final, essay in "The Double Garden." I often declare that it is a privilege to live to-day, when so many things are -happening; and Maeterlinck in this essay echoes the same thought when he says: " Let us not forget that we live in pregnant and decisive times. It is probable that our descendants will envy us the _ dawn through which without knowing it we are passing." Maeterlinck explains the change that is taking place in the following words: "The fallacious axis upon which humanity believes itself to revolve has suddenly snapped in two; and the huge platform which carries mankind, after swaying for some time in our alarmed imaginations, has quietly settled Itself again to turning on the real pivot that had always supported it. Nothing is changed except one of those unexplained phrases with which we cover the things we do not understand. Hitherto the pivot of the world seemed to us to be made up of spiritual forces; today we are convinced that it is composed of purely material energies. We flatter ourselves that a great revolution has been

accomplished in the realm of truth. As a matter of fact there hits been in tho republic of our ignorance but a permutation of epithets, a sort of verbal coup d'etat, the words ' mind ' and ' mutter being no more than the interchangeable attributes of the same unknown." Here Maeterlinck traverses the ground so completely covered by ISergson in his "Matter and Momory." He also hints at a point cleverly stressed by Nietzsche over and over again in the course of his writings, that the world is groaning Under the tyranny of an imperfect terminology—that tho very language invented to promote human intercourse and to spread human culture is turning upon the race that created it with disastrous cffcct. 1 have just come across a present-day illustration of the extent to which language has become a convention, and therefore incapable of conveying the exact truth. This is as true of the spoken as of the written language. There is a convention that words should be arranged in a certain sequence, called grammatical, altogether regardless that the ungrammatical arrangement often conveys the gradations of thought and feeling with greater accuracy. There is also a convention that only certain words should be ■ used in writing and in speaking, although in such limitation the phrases in popular use and therefore the more readily understood are entirely shut out. A few weeks since the great British public received a great shock when the Manchester Guardian published a verbatim report of a speech made on a recent Sunday by " Jim" Larkin. the Dublin strike leader. Commenting 011 this unusual incident, the London Nation remarked : •' Those who conduct that great newspaper (the Manchester Guardian) saw that the style, the manner, no less than the substancc of Mr Larkin's oratory was of vital significance •to those who want to understand the social history of their day. If our readers wish i-oalise not only the kind of man that Larkin is. but the kind of world that has produced him, they will do well to study that speech with carp. As oratory it has a special character; as a message to England it has all the importance of a message from an unknown world." The writer of the Nation article, after briefly reviewing yie traditions and experiences that have gone to the making of English history, proceeds :—

Now, Mr Larkin's speech at Manchester has nothing in common with all this. It observes no standards of form or rhythm, or balanced and deliberate expression. What is it? It is not declamation. . It is not persuasion, li is not argument. It is not analysis. And yet to many men and women of imagination it is more interesting and more moving than any of the cultivated orations that are to be heard to-day. It is simply the way in which a man who has lived in poverty and among very poor people talks of life as he sees it. He has- passed through no mill or school. ' His mind is not linked with any tradition or conventional form. The recognised controversies are not in his blood. The feuds of Orangeman and Hibernian have never touched his imagination. Most men who speak start from some great plan or principle or prejudice connected with this or that organisation—Home Bule, the Church, the Land system; their party with its oast and its future, or perhaps tfie creat history of England and the dignity of the House of Commons and the wrongs of the Irish race. This speech starts and ends with the actual lives of men and women. It is a simple speech, t l e thoughts and the memories and the sorrows and the personality of a man tumbling out of his mind as he stands before his comrades, tumbling out at random and with none of the discipline or order of a trained speaker. And yet what superb effects!

This is a digression which may be pardoned when I make my point. The grievances of the great masses of the unorganised or ill-organised poor at Home cannot adequately bo placed before the world by their accredited representatives in Parliament, men trained to express themselves conventionally; it takes an agi tator like Larkin or poets of. the calibrc of William H. Davies, or Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, or John Masefield to force the ugly facts t home. In like manner the deductions made by Maeterlinck from the "Life of the Bee" or from the "Intelligence of Flowers" are not possible to th» scientist or botanist limited by professional terminology. In "Life and Flowers'' Maeterlinck describes the vehement, obstinate revolt of flowers against their destiny. " They have one aim, to escape from " the fatality that fixes them to the soil—to invent wings, as it were, so that they may soar above the region that gave them birth, and there expand in the light which is their blossoming. Flowers set us a prodigious example of insubordination, of courage, of perseverance, and of cunning. It is the genius of the earth which is acting in them, the earth spirit. Insects and flowers bring gleams of the light without into the dark cavern in which we are j*?'joners. Thev too have something of the fluid which religions call divine —the fluid to which man, of all things on earth, offers the least resistance. Their evolution should make us feel that man is on the way to divinity." Maeterlinck's starting-point prepares us for much of what follows; in his opening chapter on "Our Injustice to Death" he says:—"There is therefore but one terror particular to death; that of the unknown into which it hurls us. In facing it, let us lose no time in putting from our minds all that the positive religions have left there." Having set aside as incompatible with intelligence and reason all the orthodox speculations concerning Death and the Hereafter, Maeterlinck thus faces the position he has created: —

And now we stand before the abyss. It is void of all the dreams with which our fathers peopled it. They thought that they knew what was there; we know only what is not there. It is the vaster by all. that we have learnt to know nothing of. While waiting for a scientific certainty to break through its darkness—for man has the right to hope for that whifjh he does not yet conceive —the only point that interests us, because it is situated in the little circle which our actual intelligence traces in the thickest blackness of the night, is to know whether the unknown for which .we are bound will be dreadful or not. Outside the religions, there are four imaginable solutions and no more —total annihilation, survival with our conscious ness of to-day, survival without any sort of consciousness, lastly survival in the universal consciousness or with a consciousness different from that we possess in this world.

Maeterlinck concludes that total annihilation is impossible, and in so doing he approaches the line of argument- adopted by Nietzsche to demonstrate the docrine of Eternal Recurrence. "We are," says Maeterlinck, "the prisoners of an infinity without outlet, wherein nothing perishes, wherein everything is dispersed, but nothing lost. Neither a body nor a thought can drop out of the universe, out of time and space. Not an atom of outl flesh, not a quiver of our nerves will go anywhere where they will cease to be, for there is no place where anything ceases to be. . . . Nothingness is but a child-name or (nickname which our mind has bestowed upon that which it has not attempted to embrace, for we call nothingness all that escapes our senses or our reason and exists without our knowledge." Maeterlinck adopts Emily Bronte's famous declaration, "There is no room for death," since "led astray by our imagination and by word" we have given the name of death "to anything that has a life a little different to ours." "All that dies falls into life ; and all that is born is of the same age as that which dies." And Maeterlinck makes a concluding point in support of his contention that Death should bring with it no fear; that even if nothingness or annihilation be possible, it cannot be dreadful, since it cannot be anything whatever. Coming to the consideration of his second hypothesis, survival with our consciousness of to-day, Maeterlinck repeats in part the argument elaborated in his previous essay on "Immortality,'' with the following important ]>assage added to the original considerations:—

How shall we explain that, in that consciousness which ought to survive us the infinity that precedes our birth has left no trace? Had we no consciousness in that infinity, or did we perchance lose

it on coming into the world, and did the catastrophe that produces tlio whole terror of death take place at tlio moment of our birth? None can deny that this infinity has the «ame rights over us as that whieh follows our decease. We are as much the children of the lirst as of the second; and we must of necessity have a part in both. If you maintain that you will always exist, you are hound to maintain that you haw always existed; we cannot imagine the one without having to imagine the other. If nothing ends nothing begins, for any such beginning would be tho end of something. Now although I have existed since all time, I have no consciousness whatever of my previous existence, whereas I shall have to carry to the boundless horizon of the endless ages the. tinv consciousness acquired during the instant that elapses between my birth and my death. Can my true ego then, which is about to become eternal, date only from my short sojourn on this earth? And all the preceding eternity, which is of exactly the same value as that which follows, since it is the same, shall it not count ? Will it be flung into nihility? Why is a strange privilege accorded to a few meaningless days spent on an unimportant planet? Js it because in that previous eternity we had no consciousness? What do we know about it? Tt seems very unlikely. Why should the acquisition of consciousness be a phenomenon unrepeated in an eternity that had at its disposal innumerable billions of chances, among which—unless we set a limit to the infinity of the ages —it is impossible to conceive that tlio thousands of coincidences which went to form my present consciousness did not occur over and over again ? 'J he moment we turn our gaze upon the mysteries of that eternity wherein all that happens must already have happened, it seems much more credible, on the contrary, that we have had consciousness upon consciousness which our life of to-day hides from our view. If they have •existed, and if at our death one consciousness must survive, the others must survive as well, for there is no reason to bestow so disproportionate a favour upon that consciousness which, we have acquired here below. And if all of them survive and awaken at the same tirpe, what will become of the petty consciousness of a few terrestrial moments, when it is submerged in those eternal existences? Resides even if it were to forget all its previous existences, what would become of it amid the perpetual buffeting, the endless wash, of its jiosthumous eternity? For it is but as a poor sand-drift of an island in the unrelenting jaws of two boundless oceans. It would hold its own there, puny and so precarious, only oil condition that it acquired nothing more, that it remained for ever closed, isolated and confined, impenetrable and insensible to all things, in the midst of the astounding mysteries, the fabulous treasures and visions which it would have eternally to pass through without ever seeing or hearing anything ; and that surely would be the worst death and the worst destiny that could befall us. We are therefore driven 011 all sides towards the theories of an universal consciousness or of a modified conscious-

Before, however, finally dismissing the problem of personal survival, lU. IYJaeterlinck proceeds interestingly to examine first the theosophical hypothesis of reincarnation and secondly the spiritualistic hypothesis. In regard to the former, M. Maeterlinck remarks:—" I<; cannot be denied that of all the religious theories reincarnation is the most plausible and the least repellent to our reason. Nor must we overlook that it has on its side the authority of the most ancient and widespread religions, those which have incontestably furnished humanity with the greatest aggregate of wisdom and which we have not yet exhausted of their truths and mysteries. ' Maeterlinck's objection to the theosophical hypothesis is the lade of proof wherewith to win our distrustful faith. " J have sought in vain for a single one in the leading works of our modern theosophists. They confine themselves to a mere reiteration of dogmatic statements which are of the vaguest. Their great argument —the chief and when all is said the only argument which they adduce —is but a sentimental argument. Their exponents promise us that by exercising our minds, by refining our senses, by etherealising our bedies, we shall be able to live with those whom we call dead, and with the higher beings that surround us. It all seems to lead to nothing very much and rest on very frail vases, on" very vague proofs, derived from hypnotic sleep, presentiments, mediumism, phantasms, and so forth. It is rather surprising that those who call tfcimselves 'clairvoyants,' who pretend to be in communication with this world of discarnate spirits and with other worlds still nearer to the divine bring us 110 evidential proofs." M. Maeterlinck brings exactly the same argument to bear when analysing the N eo-sniritualistic hypothesis. Under heading " Communications With \fhe Dead,'' for instance, he inquires: —

What have these latter-day dead to tell us? To begin with, it is a remarkable thing that they appear to be much more interested in events here below than in those of the world wherein they move. They seem above all jealous to establish their identity, to prove that they etill exist, that they recognise us, that they know everything; and to convince us of this they enter into the most minute and forgotten details "with extraordinary precision, perspicacity, and prolixity. They are also extremely clever at unravelling the intricate family connections of the person actually questioning them, of any of the sitters, or even of a stranger entering the room. They recall this one's little infirmities, that one'? maladies, the eccentricities or tendencies of a third; they have cognisance of events taking place at a distance; they see, for instance, and describe to their hearers in London an insignificant episode in Canada. In a word, they say and do almost all the disconcerting and inexplicable things that are sometimes obtained from a first-rate medium; perhaps they even go a little further; but there conies from it all no breath, 110 glimmer *bf the hereafter, not- even the something vaguely promised and vaguely waited for.

We shall be told that the mediums are visited only by inferior spirits, incapable of tearing themselves from earthlv cares and soaring towards greater anr! loftier ideas. It ir> passible, and no doubt we are wrong to believe that a spirit stripped of its body can suddenly be transformed and reach in a moment the level of our imaginings; but could thev not at least inform us where they are", what they feel, and what they do?

M. Maeterlinck devotes considerable space to considering the claims put forth by modern spiritualists, and he conducts his examination in a thoroughly judicial spirit, and while evidently puzzled at times to account for many of the manifestations, at the same time he is unwilling to concede that the ultimate solution of the problem of the survival of consciousness lies along this line of thought. I have not space to follow M. Maeterlinck through his final sections in detail, but must content myself for the present with a brief summary and a conclusion. He points out that the theory of survival without consciousness actually amounts to annihilation, and that this is a solution calculated to foster indolence. And while our finite minds cannot conceive of an infinite consciousness, it is impossible to separate the idi'-a of intelligence from the idea of consciousness. Finally M. Maeterlinck decides in favour of an ultimate absorption into a universal or cosmic consciousness, as more in keeping with a rational scheme than any other hypothes's yet put forward in solution of the mystery of Eternity. Here ho practically ioins band with Mt Algernon Blackwood, and I see an interesting study in comparing the thoughts set out in say "The Ontanr." " Pan's Garden,'' or "A Prisoner in Fain-land," with Al. Maeterlinck's suggestions. In conclusion of the whole matter the author nf " Our Eternity'' says—and the passage is example of the splendid spirit in which the inquiry throughout has been conducted : —

I have added nothing to what was al'-cAdv known. I have simply tried to separate what may be true from that which is assuredly not true; for, if we do not know where truth is, we nevertheless learn to know where it is not.

And perhaps, in seeking for that undiscoverablc truth, we shall have accustomed our eyes to pierce the terror of the last hour by looking it full in the face. .Many things beyond a doubt remain to be said which others will say with greater force and brilliancy, lint we need have no hone that any one "ill utter on this earth the word that shall put an end to our uncertainties. It. is very probable on the contrary that no one in this world, nor perhaps in the next, will discover the great secret of the universe. And, if w-e reflect upon this even for a moment, it is most, for tnnate that it should be so. We liavn not only to resit;!) ourselves to living in the incomprehensible, but to rejoice that we cannot go out of it. If there were no more»iusolul;le questions nor impenetrable riddles, infinity would not be infinite; and then we should have for ever -to curse the fate that placed us in a universe proportionate to our intelligence. All that exists would bo but a gateless prison, an irreparable evil and mistake. The unknown and the unknowable are necessary, and will, per haps, always be necessary to our happiness. In any case, i would not wish my worst enemy, were his understanding a thousandfold loftier and a, thousandfold mightier than mine, to bo condemned eternally to inhabit a world of which lie had surprised an essential secret a.nd of which as a man he had begun vto grasp the least tittle.