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Fordham of the World,' London, 1649, consists of a number of moral essays, illustrated by quotations from ancient and modern literatures. Among modern writers, Spenser, Cowley, Donne, Cornwallis, Bacon, Fuller, Hall, Heylyn, and Sylvester are represented. A Latin poem prefixed is signed I. H. (James Howell ?). In 1660 appeared five tracts which are sometimes met with as separate publications and sometimes bound together in a single volume, bearing the general title 'Virtus Rediviva, with several other pieces from the same pen.' Each piece has a separate title-page and is separately paged. (1) 'Virtus Rediviva, or a Panegyrick on the late king, Charles I.' consists of a prose tract and two elegies in verse, written on the anniversaries of Charles I's execution in 1657 and 1658 respectively. (2) 'Love's Labyrinth, or the Royal Shepherdess, a Tragi-Comedie, by Tho. Forde Philothal,' is partly imitated from Robert Greene's 'Arcadia,' and partly borrowed from Gomersal's 'Sforza, Duke of Milan.' One of its songs is taken bodily from Greene; another is a version of Anacreon's 'Love's Duel.' The play is in blank verse. It was never acted. Verses by 'N. C.' and Edward Barwick are prefixed. (3) 'A Theatre of Wits, Ancient and Modern,' a collection of apophthegms. (4) 'Fænestra in Pectore, or Familiar Letters,' apparently a selection from Forde's actual correspondence with his father, a friend at Barbadoes, E. B. (Edward Barwick ?), and others. In a letter addressed to 'Mr. T. F.,' i.e. the famous Thomas Fuller, he praises unstintedly Fuller's 'Church History' (p. 135). On p. 166 he translates Martial's 'Non amo te Sabidi,' &c., as 'I do not like thee, Nell,' &c., the prototype of the better-known ' I do not like thee, Dr. Fell ' [cf. , and or ]. (5) 'Fragmenta Poetica, or Poetical Diversions with a panegyrick upon his sacred Majestie's most happy return on the 29 May 1660.' Besides sacred poems, there are some verses here in praise of George Herbert and Thomas Bastard. The description 'Philothal,' which commonly follows Forde's name on his title-pages, is apparently an abbreviation of 'Philo-thalassios,' a lover of the sea. [Hunter's manuscript Chorus Vatum in Addit. MS. 24489, f. 400; Forde's works; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Bailey's Life of Thomas Fuller, pp. 585-6, 759.]  FORDHAM, GEORGE (1837–1887), jockey, son of James Fordham, was born at Cambridge on 24 Sept. 1837. He was trained for the turf by Richard Drewitt and Edward Smith, and at the age of thirteen had his earliest mount at Brighton. In October 1851 tie gained his first victory in the Trial Stakes at the Brighton autumn meeting. He carried off the Cambridgeshire in 1853 on Little David, and in the following year he unexpectedly won the Chester Cup on Epaminondas. From this time Fordham became a very popular rider. In 1855 he was at the head of the list of winning jockeys, and during eight succeeding years he occupied the same position, his best record being 165 wins in 1862. In 1859 he won his first important race, the One Thousand Guineas. The same year he won the Oaks on Summerside. Fordham won the Ascot Cup five times, the Alexandra Plate once, the Gold Vase six times, the Ascot Stakes twice, and the Prince of Wales's Stakes four times. He rode several favourites for the Derby, but only won it in 1879 upon Sir Bevys. Fordham had in all twenty-two mounts for the Derby, his last appearance in the race being in 1883, when he was unplaced on Ladislas. He never won the St. Leger, though he rode twenty-two races. He won the Oaks five times. For the Two Thousand Guineas Fordham had also twenty-two mounts, but only won twice. He secured the One Thousand Guineas seven times out of twentv-one mounts for that race. Many of Fordham s best efforts were in small races, when he frequently succeeded against expectation by his singular skill and resolution. His greatest achievement is said to have been in 1871, when he won the Cambridgeshire on Sabinus. His only Cesarewitch victory was in 1857, when the famous dead heat occurred between three. Fordham was a great favourite on the continent, and especially in France, where he frequently rode. He won the Grand Prix de Paris in 1867, 1868, and 1881, the French Derby in 1861 and 1868, and the French Oaks in 1880. He had no superior as a rider of two-year-olds. His weight was only 3st. 12lb. when he won his first Cambridgeshire. His services were much in request from a very early period; and one owner presented him with a Bible, a testimonial pin, and a gold-mounted whip, all of which he preserved through life, religiously following the motto engraved upon the whip of 'Honesty is the best policy.' He also received souvenirs from the Rothschilds, the Prince of Wales, and other patrons of the turf. He was frequently offered 1,500l. a year to ride in England and France, but he would never agree to receive a fixed salary.

During the latter part of his career failing health frequently kept Fordham out of the saddle. Between 1875 and 1878 he was not seen in public. His last win was in


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 Leopold de Rothschild's colours on Brag in the Brighton Cup of 1883, and his last race the Park Stakes at Windsor in August 1884. He carried the most implicit confidence of all his employers, and was kind to young jockeys. It was said that he never attempted to take advantage of a youngster at the start.

Fordham was twice married: first to Miss Hyde of Lewes, who died in 1879; and secondly to her cousin, Miss Leith. After the loss of his first wife he went to reside at West Brighton, where an accident in riding produced a concussion of the brain. He was for weeks in a serious condition. At the close of 1884 Fordham left Brighton and returned to Slough, where he had previously lived, and he died there 12 Oct. 1887.

Fordham was devoted to his family. He was never known to give a vote for a parliamentary candidate in his life. He was extremely reticent on horse-racing, had a deep aversion to gambling of all kinds, and ever showed the greatest anxiety to keep his son from being in any way associated with the turf. His own career was scrupulously honourable.

FORDUN, JOHN (d. 1384?), is the writer upon whom [q. v.] based the earlier part of his great work, the 'Scotichronicon.' At the end of his chronicle Walter Bower claims for himself books vi-xvi., while to his predecessor he allows books i-v. (Scotichron. i. 1, ii. 513). Fordun wrote fifteen of the first twenty-three chapters of book vi. also (ib. i. 338), and the rest of Bower's work down to 1383 is very largely based upon Fordun's notes (Prolog. Scotichron. i. 1). Even in the first five books of the 'Scotichronicon ' there are, however, many passages [see ] interpolated by Bower.

The prefaces to the later redactions of the 'Scotichronicon' are our only authority for Fordun's life. He only once intimates his name by an acrostic (, p. 3; Scotichron. i. 3). The important manuscript of the 'Scotichronicon' in the British Museum (Royal Library, 13 EX), commonly known as the 'Black Book of Paisley' (a fifteenth-century manuscript), calls John de Fordun 'capellanus ecclesiæ Aberdonensis,' while the 'prologue' to the 'Scotichronicon' styles him 'dominus Joannes Fordoun, presbyter' (, pref. p. xvii;, pp. 2, 15). From these indications Mr. Skene has inferred that he was a 'chantrey priest' in the cathedral at Aberdeen (p. xiv). From the preface to another manuscript we learn that Edward 'Langschankes,' the tyrant, had carried off to England or burnt all the truly national records of the Scotch history. After their loss, 'a certain venerable' priest, Lord John Fordon, desired to repair the loss, and, after collecting in his own country, wandered like a 'curious bee' with his manuscript ('Codex Sinualis') in his breast, 'in prato Britanniæ et in oraculis Hiberniæ, per civitates et oppida, per universitates et collegia, per ecclesias et cœnobia, inter historicos conversans et inter chronographos perendinans' (Pref. to Book of Cupar; the Dublin MS. of Scotichron. ap., pp. 49, 50). This journey in quest of materials is calculated, from internal evidence, to have taken place between 1363 and 1384. In the prologue to the 'Scotichronicon' Bower tells us of a conversation in which a certain venerable doctor remarked that he could very well recollect this writer of whom the company made so much: 'He was an unlearned man (homo simplex), and not a graduate of any school' (Scotichron. i. 1). Mr. Murray suggests that the John Fordun whose name appears in the 'Exchequer Rolls of Scotland' as making certain payments on behalf of the burgesses of Perth in 1393-5 was the historian (, pp. 2, 3; cf. Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, iii. 366). He also remarks that Fordun must have been the friend of Walter Wardlaw, the bishop of Glasgow and legatus a latere in Scotland, and, if a chantry-priest of Aberdeen, must likewise have known [q. v.] (, pp. 2, 3; cf., bk. v. c. 50). Fordun probably died soon after 1384, the year in which his annals end.

Fordun's writings, as now preserved, consist of: Some manuscripts also include certain 'materials.' Of these materials a great part has been worked up into the later books of his 'Chronica;' the rest consist of documents relating to the 'controversy with England as to the independence of Scotland.' These 'Independence' documents appear in book vi. of the 'Chronica' as contained in the Wolfenbüttel MS., and before the 'Gesta Annalia.' In the Trinity Coll. Cambridge MS. they are found in the middle of the 'Gesta Annalia' at the year 1284. Of the 'Chronica Gentis Scotorum,' book i. is almost entirely mythical; book ii. continues the story of the Scots from their first king in Great Britain, Fergus, to the days of Maximus and Theodosius (c. 395 A.D.); book iii. extends to the days of Charles the Great (c. 814 A.D.); book iv. down to the reign of Macbeth (1057 ); book v. from Malcolm Canmore's accession to the death of King David (1153 A.D.) The
 * 1) 'Chronica Gentis Scotorum.'
 * 2) 'Gesta Annalia.'

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HE living spirit of the ages is made up of ideals more or less visionary in their inception, more or less unattainable in their plenitude. And in nations, as in individuals, they are subject to the law of growth and decay—the law that governs the seed in the soil, the star-dust in the planetary system—as well as to the law of conservation. Like matter itself, an ideal is mutable, but indestructible. It does not die; it only undergoes a change. It expresses itself in art and literature and religion only after it has attained a certain degree of common conception. An idealist is ahead of his time only in the sense that he is articulate. The same is true of a nation. For even primitive people, even effete races have a message for those above or below them. The heritage of the Ideal, however small can not be exhausted. That is why in periods of awakening, or of cataclysmic change, the light often comes


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 from unremembered and unexpected sources—sources that were thought to be exhausted or barren. The ideals of Greece, of Rome, of the Orient, the ideals even of primitive man, come back to us, in the eternal cycle of the spirit, to leaven our own. They often surprise us in moments of depression or exaltation, in our silences, in our subliminal spells, even in our daily grind. Out of the vague, even vagrant conceptions of the mind an ideal slowly evolves, assumes definite shape and form. Error-bound but truth-directed, we are constantly moving to a certain goal in its unfolding infinitudes. Its fiat is universal, despite its apparent failures. The grocer as well as the poet, at one time or another, must recognize and accept its circulating medium. Whether they squander it or save it or invest it—whether they profit by it or not—is another question. But they are idealists in that they are both dissatisfied with its purchasing power. We are all idealists in that we are ever discontented with the


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 present state of the Ego and the World. It is among the poor and obscure, however, that the ideal often finds its sincerest expression; for those who make it their business often speculate in certain tangible concrete forms of it—reform formulas—that are neither useful in a general way nor attractive. The poor man, on the other hand, concerns not himself with reforms; nor does he entertain such visions of a regenerated world as might obstruct the way to his immediate needs. His ideal, it is true, may consist in having a home instead of a slum-hole; in sending his children to school instead of the factory; in being free to work whenever and wherever he please, instead of being a slave to capital or to labor. It is nevertheless an ideal, which, although obviously material, has in it a spirituality that can revolutionnizerevolutionize [sic] the world. He sincerely desires to improve his own condition and to give the world better and healthier children. And this desire, though it be only partly realized in a lifetime, is the heritage of the ideal, which


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 he bequeaths to them.

But the world seldom recognizes the spirituality in the material ideals of the poor. They are ridiculed by those who preach, but do not practice, the higher ethics. They are flouted, called base, worldly, sordid, by those professional idealists of religion and literature and art. And yet, a loaf of bread can regenerate a soul; a loaf of bread can precipitate a revolution. And by the law of reaction, materialism does become sordid, and the vaunted spirituality of its critics loses its vitality and attraction. Hence the epochal outbreaks of doubt, skepticism, heresy, revolt. For the man who is struggling for wealth and power or fame and glory, is no better and no worse, without a lofty ideal, than the man who is struggling for bread. The latter, in fact, is more deserving of respect, is more entitled to the consideration of the world. And the sooner he gets it, the better for the world. For the spirituality of his material ideals, now that he too has become a self-conscious Ego, is fast


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 itself into a monstrosity of selfishness. He is no longer a poor working man; he is a man of the working poor, who refuses to be poor for ever and refuses morevermoreover [sic] to work. He is a menace to-day. He will become a scourge to-morrow. No Labor Union can guide him; no Government can deter him. He is a fatality. Spiritually deformed himself, he comes, paradoxical as it may seem, to restore the world to its spiritual ideals. The religion that was given him as a consolation, he rejects; the faith that was perverted to keep him in bondage, to reconcile him to his gilded fetters, he renounces forever. But he will swing back with his masters from the height of a bloody crisis to the highest ideal—to a spirituality that is the common heritage and the cherished treasure of the rich and the poor. For a chastening process leaves its mark even upon our daily grind. It may take away our daily bread, but not the stuff of which our daily bread is made.

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 intensified, sublimated. It is inherent in the material; and it should inform and illumine and beautify it. True, there is scarcely any evidence of this in the working man of to-day. But his spirituality, which is thought to be dead, is only dormant. And sometimes it betrays itself in a grotesque, spiritual somnambulism. For the working man still goes to church, despite the atheism, expressed or implied, of the two principal agents of his misery—the labor leader and the capitalist. The one in theory, the other in practice are responsible for his spiritual deformity. His leader tells him not to bother, not to worry about his soul; he even doubts its existence. And the capitalist, by his conduct in business and out of business, confirms, gives additional force to the labor leader's advice. For what proof have we, it is often asked nowadays, of the existence of the soul and of the necessity, in consequence, of a soul-ideal? I go neither to metaphysics nor to spiritualism for an answer. To


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 those who deny its existence, who make light of the innate divine flame in man, who can not see anything outside of matter, or anything but matter in matter, to these materialists I offer the perfume of the rose, the light of the sun, the emanation of a firefly, the aura of a planet, to say nothing of the human understanding. Are these material? Do they, to go back to fundamentals in physics, occupy the same space with the objects from which they emanate? The room in which I write, to take a simple example, becomes dark after sunset. It is not, you will concede, a vacuum. It is filled with air. But I turn a switch in the wall and the electric bulbs fill it also with light. The two substances, light and air, occupy the same space simultaneously. Now, if light were matter, it would have a specific gravity; and this specific gravity, were it heavier than that of the air, would chase it out of the room. In which case, I could not continue to write—I would cease forthwith to exist. And what is true of


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 the light in my room, is true of the perfume of the rose, which hovers around it with the air it breathes and the sunshine it drinks. It is true, in fact, of the whole universe. For the air and the sunshine and the imponderable, intangible ether all occupy simultaneously the same space. How can our simple rule in physics explain this?

Or, to come to man, how can your material philosophy explain that quality in personality which is called magnetism, which I prefer to call spirituality? By chemistry, by the principle of attraction and repulsion in cells or an organic structure of cells? But the person that repels us outwardly, physically, sometimes attracts us by a something he has within—an emanation akin to the light of the sun and the perfume of the rose. What is it? Intellect, intelligence, emotions, social and eductionaleducational [sic] accomplishments? These are not always attractive. Intellect, on the contrary, might even be repulsive. Intelligence is not the heritage of man alone;


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 the dumb beasts have a sagacity that sometimes excellsexcels [sic] our own. And the art of the bird building his nest and the bees making their honey-comb, can not be surpassed by the art of man. What is that mysterious, elusive quality then? Social accomplishments, charm? These may be rendered repulsive by selfishness, conceit,—by an inflated, assertive, aggressive Ego.

What is it, my dear Materialist, that draws you in your unconsciousness to me? I heard you once in Madison Square expounding wholesale the negations of the day; I saw you afterwards feeding the birds in the park. And I see you every day, though your name is not trumpeted in the daily press, giving of your mite to charity. There must be a flaw somewhere in your material philosophy. For if you are in yourself a sort of detached cosmos, why take the trouble to establish these little attachments between you and the outside world? I think I understand you, forgive the boast, better than you understand


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. The human personality, you tell me, is a bundle of intellections and emotions. Granted. But this is true, you will concede, of both primitive and civilized man. And some primitive men, you will also concede, I hope, are more attractive to us than the most developed specimen of civilization. I offer you this explanation, therefore, which you may accept or reject as you list. Your bundle of intellections and emotions,—your intelligence, your highly developed mind,—your passion for truth and justice,—these are cold and chilling and unfructifying, if they are not illumined and warmed by that innate, inherent flame, which is as evident at times in primitive man as well as in you and me. This innate light is the spirituality which is manifest in lesser or greater degree in individuals as in nations, according to the recognition it receives,—according to the ideal of it that is cherichedcherished [sic] and upheld. And this, I maintain, is the highest ideal of an individual or a nation. Complete victory in the struggle to attain it, is not


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 often attained. But no defeat is richer in new possibilities than this of the spirit fighting for the spiritual ideal. And although no complete victory is often attained, socially conceived, materially considered, there is no such thing in it as complete failure. By a happy dispensation, every one is an object of comfort or of envy to his fellow men. No one is ever low enough, however baldly material he might be, or high enough, however spiritual he might become, to be alone. The ideal itself saves us from this dreary distinction. For we all find some one below us or above us—in most cases below and above us—to afford us a satisfaction and an incentive—to make the arduous ascent a pleasant jaunt. If the working man and the labor leader, the capitalist and the politician all recognized this truth and espoused the ideal it connotes, the social and industrial problems of the times would not seem so hopelessly insoluble, without general strikes and revolutions. For legislation alone is, after all, only a form of


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 compulsion. And a man without a spiritual ideal will obey the law when he can't help it and break it when he can.


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HEN learning was monopolized by the monks in the Middle Ages, people specialized only in warfare and statecraft. And even these were not altogether free from the scholastic influence. Gradually, however, as the monopoly was broken, the guilds came into existence. And the crafts, aided by the printing press, developed and flourished. Even then, the educated man, whether he was a tailor or a monk, a statesman or a cobbler, did not confine himself, in his pursuit of knowledge, to any one particular subject. Vocationalism was a centre that lighted and included many avocations.

This is still true of the Orient, where a tent-maker, for instance, might be a poet; a distiller of perfumes would be an authority on astronomy perhaps or jurisprudence; a professional singer, though he be of the slave cast, as in the Abbaside dynasty, often composes his own lyrics and masters one or more of the crafts as


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 weaving or dying; and that multi-minded personage, the Father of the Community, who cures the diseases of the body and the soul and administers justice,—who is a good priest, a competent physician and an upright judge, as the occasion requires,—is by no means extinct. In Europe, though instances of men of genius practicing one or more of the crafts or the sciences, do not abound as in the Orient, Michael Angelo and Benvenuto Cellini were the archtypesarchetypes [sic] of many lesser luminaries who combined two or more of the arts and could discourse entertainingly, if not intellectually, on theology or alchemy orMachiavellismor Machiavellism [sic]. The sculptor, in other words, was not merely a worker in stone or marble, a master only of lines and curves; the poet often became a statesman; the painter could detach himself from his canvas to study mathematics. And there are instances of musicians as authors and masters, moreover, of a literary style.

People were avid of knowledge in those days; more, indeed, for the pleasure it gave


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 than the material benefits it afforded. Specialization was not known,—was not, at least, the dominating purpose of life. The tendency, the aim of all education was to produce well-rounded intellects, pleasing personalities, cultured individuals that could be at ease in any drawing room, at court, in the studios, the ateliers and the shops. An educated man was, indeed, a man of accomplishments—of circumambient intelligence. He had a general pass at least to the treasure house of knowledge; and he continued, unlike the university graduate of to-day, to make use of it, to enjoy its many privelegesprivileges [sic], even though his calling were of the humblest and most prosaic. An excursion into the world of knowledge, under the exclusive management of men of genius, independent of the schools and universities, was, indeed, an uncommon joy. For those whose business it was to reach the hidden springs of knowledge, no subject, natural or supernatural, human or divine, was ever too great or too small, too


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 distant or too near. They were at home in the universe. Theirs was indeed a circumambient intellect. But this quality of the mind, in its colossal form, is a phenomenon in modern history. It appeared in England in the sixteenth century and on the continent in the seventeenth and eighteenth. It found its greatest exponents in Shakespeare, in Carlyle, in Voltaire and Goethe, in Hugo and Balzac. With the average man of talent, however, a circumambient intellect too soon evaporates or crystallizes, resolving itself into its initial form, or its actual size,—thinning, in other words, into nothing, or settling down to a point. I have mentiondmentioned [sic] the exceptions. But even in Voltaire and Goethe, how many breaks and how many rusty links do we find in the golden circle of each. And how often, when they can not run or walk erect, do they seem to us as shuffling, limping, chicaning levites in their eagerness to maintain their reputation as the master builders of the Circumambient System of human knowledge? The buckramed


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 of the German—Carlyle's fanfaronades of idolatry to the contrary—and the astute Jesuitism of the Frenchman, while betraying the human frailty in genius, have often saved their intellects from spreading into nothingness or settling down to a point. That they refused to specialize, however, was their supreme virtue. But with the development of the sciences, intellectual circumambulating became a thing of the past. Hugo wrote its epitaph. Now specializing is the vogue, the dominating purpose of life, the supreme virtue. It is indeed the chief characteristic of our civilization. It has its conveniences, to be sure, and its rewards. A specialist gets somwheresomewhere [sic], though it be no further than his kitchen or his cellar. And we do not have to tarry and toil to understand the one-sided man. We waste no time in trying to get a side or a back view, much less an inner view of our master Monomind. About face! for our benefit, and we either go our way or stay. No, we no longer have time for


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 ; nor have we patience with the idea of even thinking out for ourselves a pleasure-giving jaunt. To accomplish things in a material way, to succeed, is the dominating passion of the age. And there is no success, the specialists say, outside of a bee line to your goal. And a bee line, we say, does not too often require a superfluity of mind—a bee-mind is sufficient. But is there no truth in pragmatism? Is the practical philosopher to be wholly ignored, even when his cynicism, undisguised, is held in check? Often his forthrightness has a seductive air. If we want to be decisive, positive, aggressive in our views, we must not ever look, we are told, at both sides of a question. If you want to be an organizer, a master of men, you must be a one-sided, single-minded fanatic. For once you are accessible to evidence, once you are open to reason, you are lost. The fanatics, the monominds, are the great successes of the world. And be sure to have spunk enough to rise and keep going, when, in your blinkers, you stumble or


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 digress. And whatever you do, avoid the futilities of knowledge, the superfluities of culture. This is good advice, no doubt, to a plumber, a grocer, or a politician. But is there any truth in it to a man of intellectual and spiritual aspirations? A negation, to echo, Carlyle, never established a government; indifference never founded a religion. Only a well-rounded intellect, a spirit nourished in the eternal sources of intelligence and culture, of justice and wisdom, is a safeguard against both indifference and skepticism.

But have we to-day such well-rounded intellects, such finished personalities, where the mind and the soul are equally developed, where a sheer joy in knowledge is sought and held out as the highest and noblest of all attainments? We have nowadays what might be called, either a hothouse intellect endowed with an adamant will, or a naturally powerful intellect debased by a vulgar soul. There are strong minds wrapt in a limited, dried-up


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, or a clear, healthy consciousness harnessed in inherited prejudices or acquired preconceptions. And everywhere is a dislike, a contempt for change. The ruts of life are congested:; [sic] the highways are almost vacant. And seldom do we, even in a life-time, yield to the impulse that calls us out of the ruts. Safety first, is a false slogan. It should be, Success first, Otherwise, we would cease anon to be strap-hangers and commuters, mere five-cent coupons for the Corporation of Pragmatism. Indeed, we would straightaway change our habit of mind. We would begin to have a mind. But there is a training of the will against such a change, to say nothing of the interests involved. And that is why, I think, the human will nowadays is more developed than it was in the past. That is why, too, it is often mistaken for power. Why, a man who can burrow a rut in the curb between his home and his office, between his faith and his interest, must surely be endowed with the will to conquer. Presumably


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 so. But an intractable will is not even the sign or proof of better intellectual metal; gold is more ductile than iron.


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HE world of knowledge is honeycombed nowadays with railroads under private control. We no longer have, as in the past, a monopoly of transportation and communication;—not even a Tourist-Agent who will assume the responsibility of a personally conducted tour on all the lines, except it be the Daily Press. And then, you are likely to lose your baggage and find yourself stranded in the wilderness of belief. You begin to doubt, not only the vaunted omniscience of your Guide, but even yourself. The monks of the Middle Ages, though their system of transportation was not based on dividends or profit-sharing schemes, were good conductors, excellent engineers, faithful and experienced guides. The incidents of the journey were not very agreeable, but accidents were scarce. A traveller risked little or nothing by


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 himself to the monks; his body and his soul were well served, though not with equal consideration; and his baggage, after a thorough examination, of course, was checked and very carefully handled. Moreover, they agreed to let him stop as long as he wished at every stage of the journey, provided he did not overpraise the Line and thereby reduce its solid comforts. And this, the most attractive feature of their Programme, they guaranteed to bring him back to the Starting Point. The only condition the monks imposed upon their passengers, was silence. No criticisms, no commendations, no suggestions. Not even such incidents as stopping on the way to burn a conductor alive for taking another course than that prescribed in the Schedule, was even to be questioned. Such outside interference was banned under penalty of a similar death. But the people, on the whole, were satisfied with the System, which worked tolerably well for a century or more; although it was whispered, now and then, at the various


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 stages of the Journey that, the fire of the Engine having been exhausted, a few of the passengers, who had the temerity to comment upon one of the untoward incidents of burning, were themselves utilized as fuel.

These whispers spread, slowly acquired a cumulative force, and became in the course of time a voice, a cry, an echoing and re-echoing protest. For the monks of the Middle Ages were human. They abused their monopoly of power. And some of the passengers themselves, the more enterprising who did not embark upon the Journey solely for pleasure, had already surveyed certain lands, mapped out a road of their own, and became in time experienced and reliable Tourist-Agents. The novelty of a personally conducted Tour had its appeal. It became the vogue. The monks, therefore, soon lost the monopoly. And the Luther and Calvin Lines, the Bruno and Galileo Systems, the Erasmuses', the Schoolmen's, the


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 Limited, the Swedenborg Rapid Transit of the Universe, even the Abu'l-Ala Caravans in the Near East,—all enjoyed a prosperity that made their dividends attractive for a season. But these privately-owned Lines, these personally conducted Tours, continued to increase till it was no longer safe to travel on any of them, because each one went in a different direction and had no connection at all with the others. The transfer system was not known in those days. And the result was that, if you wanted to make a tour of the world, you would be left high and dry in some wilderness, or stranded in some port, if you did not come back to your starting point as often as you had to make a change. Hence the disappointment and dissatisfaction of the public, who soon began to realize and appreciate again the advantages of the monks' Central and CircumabientCircumambient [sic] System. But we are progressing—we can not go back to the monks, it was urged by some; the commuting habit, its virtues and attractions, were insisted upon by


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 others. But no one seemed to think of a transfer system, or imagine the possibility of a fusion of interests, or even dared to suggest the construction of shuttles between certain Lines. The confusion soon developed to anarchy and chaos. Private-ownership of the roads of knowledge and faith bcamebecame [sic] a public nuisance. But how was the nuisance to be abated? By going back to the monks. Their circumambient system of roads, was partly destroyed, partly merged in the private Lines; and it was not possible to reconstruct or redeem even a narrow gauge to the nearest junction of skepticism and doubt.

In fact, though the people did not cease to travel, to commute rather, the heads of the private corporations were discredited. People began to lose faith in the Information Bureau; tickets were destroyed; timetables were burned; and skepticism became the fashion of the day. And like all fashions, it was soon to become the means of another monopoly. Hence the Voltaires, the Goethes, the


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 Tom Paines, the Encyclopedists, who revived the World-Tour of the monks, newly mapped out, of course, without imposing any conditions or restrictions on the travelling public. It was a howling success, because the world was then, as in the days of the monks, of a single mind. Only that its mind was no longer prostrate, as it were, on the carpet of faith; it was somersaulting on the trapeze of skepticism. The Voltaire Merry-Go-Round of the Universe, the Goethe System of Scenic Railways, the Encyclopedists' Federated Roads, even the Rousseau Witching Waves became so popular that the cynical and skeptical world was transformed into a veritable Lunar Park of the Mind. Come, shake up your thinking cells and your bones. A Pamphlet will get you through the gate. And then, slap-dash into the infinity of negations, through the holy precincts of the creeds, across the hunting grounds of the privileged aristocracy, down the narrow lanes of convention, over the mountains and plains of freedom to the


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 very heart of the radiant, universal Illusion. But these joy-rides were attended by many uncommonly horrible accidents. Thrones and altars were overturned to construct branch Lines and Shuttles; Kings and Queens and Excellencies were beheaded for being in the way; and even the Christ was run over by the Sanculotte Express, engineered by the Heberts and Marats.

This continued for many years until the Circumambient System came under the control of a more responsible Board of Directors presided by such men as Hugo and Mazzini, Balzac and Dickens, Renan and Carlyle. So an era of peace and prosperity followed, which was the mother of many private fortunes. In fact, the giant Corporation was gradually overshadowed and overpowered by limited private Lines, in which the schools, the universities and the daily press invested much of their capital stock. Now the honorable habit of commuting is resumed; and joy-riding, not through the infinity of negations, but far into the


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 of indifference, has become again the vogue. Instead of patronizing, however, the privately-owned Lines and entrusting their precious life and time to the precariousness of the shuttle and transfer System, those who place safety above dividends, prefer to walk the while they clamor for public ownership of public enterprises. Meanwhile, the rank of those who have their own "flivvers" is growing day by day. And the crying need of the times is an efficient Police Force to direct the Traffic.


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UR ideals are the vehicles of our illusions; our illusions are the motor forces of our desires; our desires are born of an innate, insatiable longing for the Beautiful, the Good, and the True,—for the superlatives, in other words, of what, according to our own light, is the truth; and our own light, that undying spiritual flame in the temple of our being, has its eternal sources in the sun and soil, as in the schools and universities, and the arts and sciences of our time. That is why, from a pure amber flame in the past, when religion was the supreme dominating force in life, it has developed into a complex, many-colored, spasmodically burning mass of inharmonies. The amber hue is seldom seen nowadays; a green ray filters through the smoke; a golden spark now and then illumines it, but only for a spell; the opalescent rays


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 fitfully rise and swell only to be eclipsed by the blaze of reddish smoke, akin to the scientist's nebular beginning—the reddish smoke of the chaos of our time. And why this chaos? The innate eternal flame of the soul is not extinguished in man—his spirituality is not dead. But while in the past it was fed by one stoker, so to speak, it is to-day fed by a hundred, a thousand stokers, indifferent and indiscriminate, who gather their fuel at random in forests young and old, in rocky copses, in distant bogs. Hence the smoking, coruscating, crepitating, fitfully glowing flame. There are many wet logs and green logs in the fire; much brushwood too and peat; and the ash-heap of the ages, which never can be entirely removed. But the fire is not extinguished, will not be extinguished, can not be extinguished. Gradually the wet and green logs, the brushwood, the peat will all be consumed, and the amber golden flame will become purer, steadier, more enduring and more beautiful than ever. This is my


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 of the spiritual and intellectual chaos of our time. The true essence of the flame is still there; the eternal sources of it are still there; and the means of communication are by no means cut off. We still have stokers, although they are not called prophets and priests, who go direct to the sun and soil for their fuel. They can not, to be sure, exclude, like the prophets of old, the wet and green logs from the fire. In a democratic state and a universal state of education, every one has the right to bring his little armful to the pile; but only the good wood in the end will prevail, will dominate with its pure glow and warmth, with its steady flame, the burning mass. To drop the metaphor, the truth, which rests on the eternal verities of existence, will always prevail. Like the seasons of the year, like history, truth also repeats itself. But we seldom recognize it, when great poets or true artists—the prophets and the priests of our day—present it to us in garments spick and span, following the


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 fashion of the age, the slant of its fancy, the turn and temper of its mind. By a trick of the pen or the brush we are cozened into old beliefs; and lest we see through the diapheneities of our new deities, we are forced to put on the smoked glasses of culture, assume a conventional pose, scientific or artistic, and worship at a distance sufficiently safe for our vanities and illusions.

But when a man of uncommon courage, insight and zeal raises a little altar of his own to the old fashioned truths and the old fashioned virtues,—when he comes, to go back to my metaphor, with fuel for our innate fire direct from the sun and soil,—he is banned from the temple of the elect, denounced as a reactionary or, what is worse, poo-poohed as a high-brow. Yes, the builder nowadays, paradoxical as it may seem, is looked upon as a destroyer. But the iconoclast of the past is incarnate in the devote worshipperworshiper [sic] of the present. This, the little red-eyed iconoclasts of the times, can not see.


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 Are we not solving the great Riddle, these loud-lunged children of spiritual poverty and squalor, of intellectual anarchy and chaos, cry out. Are we not advancing in the way of new discoveries, we the apostles of the New Freedom, the forerunners of the New Era? Granted that you are, my emancipated Brothers. But dare you approach your new ideals, new truths, new virtues, and divest them of their trappings and their masks? Even the most radical among you, the Bolsheviki of the soul, the Anti-Christs, when they stand on their heads, are but a crude symbol of the Cross reversed. And the ideals of your superman, as conceived by their Teuton protagonist, not as they are poetized by his interpreters and parroters, find their highest and noblest expression in self-sacrifice. The old fashioned virtue again.

Yes, indeed; even Nietzsche who thought he had murdered Christianity, fled to the forest and brought back a few good logs for the inner fire. Even Nietzsche was


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 made the sport of his own "blond beast" and sent back to the foot of the cross—a caricature of the Christ.


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HROUGH her own medium, Nature's appeal is not always adequate. Her language is not understood alike by the woodman and the poet. Her secret is often hidden under her articulate charm; and she unveils only to the elect of the soul and mind. That is why we often get more of her through the medium of the interpreter, who pursues his task with the patience and faithfulness of a devotee. But even these translations, whether they be literal or poetic, have a varying degree of merit and interest. John Burroughs, for instance, is an excellent guide; but Thoreau, who knows as well the winding paths, the forest trails, the secret nooks and hidden mysteries, can also entertain us with a song. Even in the idealization of Nature, we have such a variety as ranges from the mirage-like glamor of Turner to the rhythmic delicacies of Corot to the apocalyptic


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 grandeur of Van Gogh.

But the translator, whether a painter or a maker of manuels or of song, loses or gains in the appeal according to the individuality he infuses into his work. The human touch is unfailing no matter how slight or how strong. It can hold you spellbound before a fern or send you scampering through the fields, chasing a butterfly or a will-o'-the-wisp. For Nature, like man, will tyrannize when she can. And when the translator is conquered by her, he loses the quality that makes his art supreme. He becomes a dryasdust master of definitions and classifications. For to be impersonal as the elements, is unhuman, unnatural. One may be sublime, as Emerson; but it is an arid sublimity void of the one great element of genius—passion.

To copy Nature? A boy with a camera can do that. To get the spirit of Nature? A woodman or a shepherd can follow the trail of the whistling wind to hoarded sunshine in distant wolds. But to interpret Nature and inform it with a human


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 that rises above it, invokes the divine in it, is the work of genius. And this can only be done through the magnifying and intensifying process. Even the eye of the soul can not always see the subtleties that conceal a world of beauty and charm. So the medium of genius, which stands between us and Nature, is necessarily complex, and is endowed moreover with an intense passion. Every note and echo, every line and shade, no matter how minute and distant, is transfigured through it, is intensified, magnified for our common perception.

Passing through a glade, I hear the flitting notes of a bird or smell the elusive aroma concealed in the brush. The poet sits there and, with infinite patience, waits and waits, till he catches the one and identifies the other. The result would be a lyric perhaps, in which both are so intensely reproduced that they are unmistakable. Inversely, and by the same token, there is good reason for magnifying certain situations in literature, on a canvas, or on the


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 stage in spectacular productions. Consider, for instance, a simoom in the desert. One feels the intensity and magnitude of even the slightest gust of the sand storm in the vast and trackless waste. There is no need there for magnification. The boundless sea of sands is a sufficient background. But on the stage or on a canvas, with a limited area and an artificial background, how can such a picture be produced with effect unless its elemental features are magnified, intensified? If a traveller, who happens to be in the audience, objects that the simoom seldom reaches such brobdingnagian proportions, the reply is, Bring to play in this circumscribed space in the open desert a compressed simoom, so to speak, and you will have an intensity of effect that can hardly be represented on the stage or on a canvas.

The same thing might be said of a poem in which all the reactions of Nature are translated through the complex medium of the senses as well as the soul. Her voice,


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 her form, her lights and shades, the very spirit of her whole being breathes and sings in the lines of a Wordsworth or a Shelly. At this height, the painter and the poet are one; or the musician brings them together, is the link between them. For a poem may not only contain a picture, or a picture, a poem, but both are often vibrant with the rythmicrhythmic [sic] harmony, even the melody of song.

This brings us to the tone-poem, of which so much has been written, and little understood. What is a tone-poem? I have heard many such, no doubt; and I have read somewhat of the musical critic's abstruseness on the subject. But not until I stood one day before a mountain stream, was the matter clear in my mind. The rolling waters, the silvery music, the foaming cascades—here is Nature's Footnote, her own simple interpretation of a tone-poem. It is more than that, indeed. It is her hornbook of the arts, a symbol of the holy trinity of genius—Music and Painting and Poetry.


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 In poetry, however, this treble phase is often inadequately expressed. Only a trained ear can make out its music, can catch the rhythmic beauty of its harmonies; and only a trained eye can appreciate the word-painting. For most people, especially in this age of free verse and realism, read in poetry only the idea it conveys, the sentiment it shrines or burlesques, or the bare facts it gathers and disseminates. But in music is the temple of the trinity of Art for those who can see as well as hear; in painting too, for those who can read as well as see.

Indeed, the three arts are as associated with each other, as related to each other as the trippletriple [sic] phenomenon of a mountain stream. For in its cascade-bedecked currents, breaking into silver spray, singing themselves into cerulean ecstasies, pausing in hollows under daffiodiled banks, flowing in transparent lucid stanzas over the moss-carpeted rocks, we have the sonata, the poem and the picture combined.

And never, as I said, could I fathom the


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 musical critic's dogmatism and esoteric sidelights thereon, until I beheld this striking and telling symbol of a tone-poem. I shut my eyes and enjoy the music; I open them and enjoy the music and the picture. I behold the waters in their coruscating splendor; I hear them sing as they roll on, meandering to the sea; and with the soul's surgings of color and shade, intensified through my own interpreting medium, I have the poem, the picture, the song—all in one masterpiece.

A tone poem, therefore, is that which appeals to the ear and the eye as well as to the eye of the soul. It is the living, moving, singing incarnation of Poetry, Painting and Music. I offer this, a footnote by Nature, to the esteemed critic's learning. And it is devoid, it will be observed, of the ruffles and flounces of criticism.

The holy trinity of Art symbolized in a mountain stream. For if we can not see a picture in a fine piece of music or hear the strains of a distant song in a


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 we can not drink of the beauty of both with the eye as well as the ear,—we had better seek entertainment in a picture gallery, where hang many a visible palpable specimen of colors rioting in quadrangles of gilded mouldings, of colors clamoring for recognition in the little square horizons of the artist's soul.


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ONCE knew a dreamer of golden dreams. He was young, handsome, robust and impecunious; and he was betrothed to that fickle, elusive, flirtatious and fascinating creature, Fame. He nursed his genius in a little studio for sevralseveral [sic] years, setting up on a pedestal near his typewriter an image of his Beloved, whom he secretly and openly denounced. He covered her with flowers of his dream at night, and pretended in the open day to be impervious to her wiles and charms. They coquetted and flirted and quarrelledquarreled [sic] for a couple of years, and were, indeed, periodically estranged. Once he turned her away from his door, because she doubted the value of the dowry he offered her. A trinket, she called it, a brummagem!

But who shall evaluate genius? Who, but Genius, is competent to say whether or not it is a fitting dowry for that elusive


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 and fickle Mistress? And though it had stood the test-fire of sacrifice, who is qualified to pronounce it genuine or false? My friend answered these questions to his own satisfaction and went one day to the market-place. But the market-men would not listen, would not be detained. The jewellers of art shook their heads; the merciers and the milliners of literature smiled; the grocers were amused; the antiquarians were annoyed. And everywhere the little terracotta gods of the bazaar, like old Buddha himself, gazed eternally upon their navels.

The dreamer of golden dreams returned to his studio and straightway burned the image of his Beloved. And he pinned on the wall, above his typewriter, the following: I lost my faith one morning in the market-place and found it the following day in a cash register.

Even the cash register, as far as he was concerned, would not disclose the secret of the transmutation. Although he invoked it every day for several months, tried to


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 bribe it with attractive objects from the toy-shop of Cleverness, shook before it the ivory rattle of Flippancy, there was no response,—not the least sign of favor. To him it seemed locked and sealed forever and ever. But one of the little imp-gods that guarded it, once grinned. Which decided my friend. HHe [sic] shook the dust of the bazaar from his feet, the dust of the studio he shook from his soul, and hied him to the solitude of the hills. There I met him one day sitting under a tree near a running stream, still nursing, as I first supposed, his genius. He was still handsome, but neither robust, did he seem, nor impecunious. In fact, he had solved, he told me, the economic problem, and was, therefore, contemplating suicide. —But this damned stream is not deep enough anywhere. And I have not the courage to hang myself or put a bullet through my brain. Brain? I don't think I have any left. I'm all nerves, nerves—and white corpuscles. I can't even bear the sight of flowers. And the chatter of


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 these birds is irritating, exasperating, maddening. What brought you here? On a hike? I wish I could go with you. But my legs can't carry me anywhere beyond my own hell. The solitude of the hills is a hollow mockery—the healing influence of the forest, a fake, a sham—worse than a doctor's prescription.... And this damned stream is not deep enough anywhere. He got up coughing, a deep, dry, racking cough, which brought the livid glow to his cheeks; and turning his back to me, he waved his hand—a silent farewell. I was, indeed, sorry, but there was nothing to be done. He was beyond the reach of any human solace. I was certain, however, that he had not the courage, even if the stream was deep enough anywhere. But the spark of genius was not extinguished in him. It scintellatedscintillated [sic] in his eyes, and seemed to feed on the tuberculosis germs in his lungs. I wondered which will survive the other, or whether he himself would survive both.


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 Two years later—miracle of miracles!—I met him again in New York—on a subway train. He recognized me first, hailed me with an exclamation and a slap of the hand. It was the hand of a strong, robust and cheerful being. I confess I would never have recognized him as the Timon of the hills I once met. My first feeling, after the delectable surprise, was as one of irresistible curiosity. How did he do it? How, in the eternal vicissitude of fate and genius, did he become reconciled? And a strap-hanger to boot! He looked prosperous, to be sure; but there was in his face and manner an unmistakable something which the city dwellers acquire—a rigidity of expression which marks their pauses and moments of quiescence. They forget, and seem of a sudden to remember, that they are parts, more or less important, of a gigantic machine. My friend seemed eager nevertheless to tell me how he recovered his health and his faith in life.

We walked out of the Subway as hilarious as children coming out of school, and went


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 to a cafe of his choice. The head-waiter saluted him smiling; the waiters were eager to serve him. But he chose his table with the knowingness and ease of a habitué, and ordered the drinks. "I suppose," he said, as he laid down his glass, "you are wondering how it came about. I have made a discovery; and what is best, I was the first to profit by it. A disease of the mind is responsible more or less for all our physical ills; egotism is the most pernicious bacillus of the mind; and this bacillus feeds, not only on dreams, ambitions, illusions, but on the general unrest, the social chaos of the times. Is there a cure? There is indeed. At least for the individual. Starve the bacillus first. Find you an anchor, a job. And don't forget, the nearest port in a storm. I found mine in a newspaper office, where I am now writing editorials for the enlightenment and guidance of mankind. My ego? It is dead as far as mankind and I are concerned. But my friends in the office deny that it is; and what is more strange,


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 it's even relishable, they say, pickled as it is in anonymity. Yes, the work is interesting, though sometimes annoying and often amusing—to myself. An editorial writer is the Keeper, you might say, of the People's Conscience. And his work, from day to day, is a picture gallery of his mind. The variety is infinite and bewildering even to himself. For if he goes through the gallery after a month or two of copy-making, he could scarcely distinguish one picture from another. And yet, they are all his own, made by his hand, after his very image! Anonymity, of course, is his salvation. It's very interesting, very amusing, indeed. And conducive, as you see, of health and cheerfulness. Let's have another drink." The succession aroused in him a ruminating, reminiscing humor. And our little corner table, as soon as I mentioned the hills, became a confessional.

"We are made or marred," he said, "more often marred by an excess of affection, which develops in us a querulous, petulent, supersensitive nature. If our relatives and


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 friends would be a little indifferent or even resentful, it would fare better with us. My immediate surroundings in those mountain solitudes were absurdly Christian, to say the least. My mother, my sister, and my brother, with whom I lived, idolized me, idealized even my defects and idiosyncracies. Yes, I have been made a tyrant by my own people; and had I the courage, I might have become an assassin or done violence even to myself. That stream"—this with a chuckle—"was not deep enough anywhere. "But I too—I invoke your kind consideration—I too have been tyrannized by a principle: tolerance has always been the despot of my conduct. Even freedom has its fetters. For while everything seemed to clash, while I continually found myself out of sorts with everybody around me, I had to suffer them to do as they pleased, because it was my principle always to do as I please. And how much we have to tolerate for a principle, and from it, when we are too conscientious to be modest and


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 sane. Oh, the tortures I have suffered in those days in suffering those who shared my home and table to have their way. You must have thought me mad, when you saw me that day, or umbrageous to a degree of madness. But I was all nerves, believe me. And nothing seemed to sooth my aching nerves as breaking something.

"And yet, when I threw a plate at the servant, because she came into the dining room in her sabots—we had a French maid from the Midi who would not for the world forgo her wooden shoes—tuk, tuk, tuk on the wooden floor is maddening in the mountain silences—it was because that French slattern, who did as she pleased in her own little way, did not go the length of her desire and throw her sabots in my face. I think, I am certain, that a sabot on the head from that servant would have cured me of my disease. "For supersensitiveness is nothing but a disease produced by submission in your household and aggravated by fawning or by an excess of affection. Sincerity in


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 either case did not help to extenuate their fault or mine. But my principle of tolerance would exercise its sway again, and, instead of throwing plates or smashing an earthen pitcher in a dramatic rage before a cowed audience of lovers, I would find myself nibbling at my own soul, eating my very heart in unrighteous anger. My nerves, taught and overcharged, would twitch for hours at a stretch, and I could not for days as much as put two and two together. During which time I could see nothing but evil intentions and malign purposes around me. If my mother prayed at noon, she was doing so to annoy me; if my brother came to the table in his shirt-sleeves, he was doing so to see how much I could tolerate—how true I was to my principle; if my sister had her breakfast in her room, it was not, I imagined, from a delicate regard for the Tyrant of the Establishment, who insisted on the etiquette of the table, but with malice a-forethought. And so, the days tragically dragged and palled, until I adopted the


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 Trappist system. For a week or ten days at a time, I would go into silence, and all apparently would go well, not with me, however, but with my household. The repression accentuated my trouble, aggravated my disease. The asylum stared me in the face. But I saved myself, as you see. Indeed, only when I left my dear good people and put up again in the cold, hard solitude of the crowd in the city, where toleration is neither a principle nor an article of faith, but simply a matter of necessity, was I cured of my querulous, petulent, acerbic, atrabilious, misanthropic abominations. And cured too of my egotism and all the illusions and all the vanities it engenders. The City hath its healing balm, my friend." And he raised his glass.

"To the Mother of Common Sense—the rest of her children don't count for much—to the great City."


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RUTH," says the philosopher, answering Pilate's question, "is the unity of universal and subjective will." But who is to elucidate for the Pilates of our time the meaning of universal will? I once made a heroic attempt to unhusk the logic of Schopenhauer and to unravel the metaphysical skein of Hegel. But something forbidding, even obnoxious, seemed to stand between me and my purpose. The husk of generalization was too thick, too hard, and, what is worse, too thorny. It was the exogenous growth, particularly the spinosity, of a purely subjective mind. The philosopher's ego, in other words, adumbrated the universal will. And in following it, we follow a shadow that aspires to Deity.

It aspires, moreover, in conflict, not in harmony. To put it mildly and plainly, there often lurks a personal interest in the generalization of philosophers. It is often


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 Two Letters to a Friend

By Theodore Watts

Letter I.—After the Wedding

as Summer's self who claspt the land—

With eyes like English skies, where seemed to play

Deep azure dreams behind the tender grey—

All light and love, she moved: I see her stand

Beneath that tree; I see the happy band

Of bridesmaids on the lawn where blossoms sway

In light so rare it seems as if the day

Glowed conscious of the future s golden strand.

O Friend, if sun and wind and flowers and birds

In language deeper drawn than human words From

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 too a personal grudge. For philosophers quarrel, not only with what they understand to be the universal will, but also with each other. Indeed, not infrequently, does the human heart cry out through their bulwarks of reason. To be sure, they quarrel not like the village crones or the town trollops; but their panoply of logic is saturated with gall. And their hatreds, their jealousies, their prejudices, wearing the masks of speculation, seldom fail to recognize each other. But with their readers, the disguise invariably succeeds. Thus we are often the dupes of an abstract theory stretched out to cover the personal prejudices and heredities of the author. It is not ignorance which our philosopher is cudgeling, but a particular ignorant contemporary; not at error or prejudice does he aim his poisoned shafts, but at an erring and prejudiced colleague.

We have a striking instance of this in Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of History, where Schopenhauer is disguised


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 in one of the theories he tears to pieces; while Schopenhauer, in his Literary Essays, clothes Hegel in transcendental rags, sets him up as a target, and proceeds to exercise upon him his dialectic skill. This, in the way of evolving a noble theory of life, or answering the query of Pilate. For the privilege of philosophers, enjoying the respect of the world, is such that they can only flay each other under the deluding assumption that they are flaying Error and Falsehood. Indeed, their generalizations often cover many a sore spot in their hearts. Envy, envy, thou Persephone of this lower world, even philosophers are counted among thy slaves. For instead of the truth, or as much as a taste of its kernel, we get the thorny husks of their egotism. And yet, they are the psychologists and metaphysicians who have tried to approach the Creator in a scientific manner!

Even a popular Handbook on Mind Power, for instance, and How to Get It, I find more satisfactory. For in it are no


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 bamboozling generalities, no disguised personal grievances, no attempt to elucidate the universal will or discover the truth of the universe. Instead of abstruse dissertations, we get a simple recipe of how to feed and develop the mind. And often, the practical method suggested makes the pursuit a pleasant and sometimes profitable adventure.

Indeed, those Manuels for the People are as wonderful and entertaining, even as transporting as the Movies. Mind and Will Training: What It Is and How It Is Done, Soul-Culture, Psychometry, Phrenometry, Mental and Magnetic Healing: What They Are and How To Get Them In An Hour,—these are improvements, methinks, on the dissertations and lucubrations of acerbic cynics and umbrageous philosophers. They take you into an enchanted land, where no Pilate or shadow of a Pilate ever haunts the scene.

And with a few directions you learn the whole business of miracles. Then suddenly, you leap out of your cribbed and


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 cramped self, a full-fledged wizard, an extra-cosmic god, with no grudge against any one or any world, into the all-pervasive, all-absorbing, all-knowing. You become, indeed, as omnipotent and wonder-working as a hero or heroine of the Movies. Why then be but a walking protoplasm, why keep your soul in a vitalized cell, when a Manuel on Soul Culture: What It Is and How It Is Done can turn you into an exalted apotheosized ape? Apotheosis for a dollar! Nothing cheaper on or off the earth. With pincers of practical logic the wires that are held by Destiny are, not drawn, but neatly cut, and you are severed from the Tyrant forever. You become a free being, an infinite Mind, a divine Personality. The detachment from the senses, or the protoplasmic definiteness, or the vitalized cell they call the soul, is absolute; and you plunge thereupon clean into the Invisible, where you are certain to lose your tail.

But if you are of those who sneer at the Manuels of Enchantment or scoff at the


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 generalities of disenchanted philosophers, and continue, like Pilate, to rub their hands and smile skeptically, may I not recommend to your distinguished consideration that Cometographer of the spirit-world, Henrik Ibsen? He it was who turned the pockets of the soul inside out and found in them only a bullet and a little cyanide of mercury. For the underlying idea of Ibsen's Art and Philosophy seems to be that one should conceive the beautiful and the true in this terrestrial existence and wait to realize them in another. Or, apply the bullet or the cyanide, if you can not wait. Sow in your soul the seeds of the ideal, which is one way of answering Pilate, and let death shield them from the frost of life. In other words, as soon as the ideal begins to germinate, in order to preserve it in its vigor and purity, hasten hence to some more friendly clime beyond the valleys of the moon. I do not think it would be far from the truth to picture those Ibsen souls as comets sweeping through this world to


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 others far and unseen, leaving in the disturbed atmosphere behind them a sinister portent of coming disaster. That is why I call him the Cometographer of the spirit-world. And thus, what are called results are only beginnings according to Plato, who answered Pilate by offering him the Magic Carpet of Dreams. Which I, for one, prefer to Ibsen's cyanide of mercury or any other equivalent. For when I saw Brand, his master creation, dying on the snow-covered heights, I wished I were living in another age, when the art of caricature was not known. I thought of Socrates, the master creation of God, dying in prison, and I thought of the Christ dying on the cross. And what avails my philosopher's abstractions, and my Manuel Maker's practical wisdom, and my Dramatist's hectic inventions, in the face of these? Indeed, the world would be richer and happier for a few more seers and sages like Socrates and Tabrizi, who would not condescend to write a book. For not


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 by the written word, or by mummery on the stage, but silent and head bowed we best answer the query of Pilate. The Christ on the cross, Socrates in prison—that is my answer to the Roman procurator of Judea.


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UT, unlike Omar, I came out of another door, not regretting wholly my adventure. For I have a reverence for Science, which is exceeded only by my reverence for what is beyond Science. The Unknown and the Unknowable, though not always helpful in the ordinary pursuits of life, have a fascination that no knowledge, no discovered mysteries of creation, can ever excellexcel [sic]. And yet, I have often gone with my empty bucket to the well of Science only to find that its water, though refreshing, does not quench the thirst. I have often, too, to satisfy my curiosity, thrown stones in the well, thinking that I could sound its depth. The astronomer and the geologist who saw me, smiled and passed on. But the naturalist, who was loath to let me go away unsatisfied, entertained me with one of his wonderful tales. He told me how varieties in animals gradually develop into species; how certain


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 causes, which in brief periods produce varieties, in long periods give rise to types; how the colors of animals are useful for concealment from their prey; how they are acquired, transmitted, distributed, and lost. He also discoursed of the hoof of the horse, and how it developed from a thickened nail; of the pest insects and scales threatening the ruin of orchards, and how they can be fought by insect allies; of the grasshoppers, and how they may be killed by a fungus disease cultivated for that purpose; of the colors and scents of blossoms, and how they attract insects and bees; of plants that hold the key to buried wealth, indicating as they do mineral veins. These, and many more fascinating and useful details, Science can relate. But the fact that they are useful soon dispels the fascination. And my learned friend the naturalist was silent when I asked him to explain to me the life-principle of growth and decay in the butterwort, the black scale, the woodchuck, or the lion. I did not mention man, whose romance, as


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 written in the Book of Evolution, he started to relate.

But I had heard this before, and asked him, therefore, to start where it ended. Not being able to read through the covers of what was to him a closed book, however, he referred me to the horticulturist, whom I found absorbed in the business of "fixing the type." But he had a little time to spare, seeing that I was an interested and earnest seeker of knowledge. And he revealed to me the wonders of Mendel's discovery, which was in itself truly wonderful. He demonstrated—the proof was irrefutable—how the dwarf pea, born of a tall ancestor, breeds true to dwarfness; and how the offspring of rusty wheat, by the aid of Mendelism, has been taught to resist disease. Now, this system, Mendelism, the horticulturist would apply to the breeding of men. "Better teaching and better sanitation," he said, "are but palliatives." Education is to man what a fertilizer is to the pea: the man might profit by it, but not his children. If the progress


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 of the race is to be permanent, it must depend, therefore, not on education, but on breeding. And as a corollary to Mendel's theory, he gave me this, from the author of the Descent of Man: "There should be open competition for all men; and the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs (he might have added, or by education) from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring."

But there are others among us who claim to have made a greater discovery than Science. These people scoff at romance, and extol a social system that would better man and redeem society, not by elimination, which breeding presupposes, but by the levelling process. Human power to them is an unmitigated evil; intellectual ability, a curse; genius itself, a crime. Nevertheless, it was one of their protagonists who wrote the Romance of Equality. But Carl Marx, its author, sees no salvation for humankind, except in political economy, the most uninteresting, to me, of all the sciences and, methinks, the least ennobling,


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 For it promotes in a nation aggressiveness, sordidness, greed; and it schools the individual in the infinite stupidities of life—in figures, and measures, and stock-taking, and such like. Political economy is the bible of the philistine. And the philistine is one who has neither intellectual nor spiritual needs. Even the theory of evolution is more uplifting.

And Mendelism, in a material sense, is nearer to the truth. For though a votary of Marx, who, we will admit, is a slave under present political and industrial conditions, may succeed eventually in freeing himself, will he be able to transmit this freedom to his offspring? "A dwarf pea, born of a tall ancestor, breeds true to drawfnessdwarfness [sic]." And no knowledge in the science of political economy, no mastering of its details of production and consumption, no faith in the laws that govern them, can be of any help to man in combatting heredity and disease. If those who free themselves from the bondage of capital and labor have no other need than to earn


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 more money and work less, if their needs, in other words, are purely material, no matter how free they might become, they can not, I am certain, ever become the parents of better offspring, They can only transmit to their children the desire, the passion, at best, for freedom and health and comfort. And I am not certain whether they have not handicapped them for the struggle, the battle they have to fight for themselves, in living as they did a purely materialistic life.

For though the children themselves achieve power, they remain, indeed, slaves. And a slave, born of a freed slave, will breed true to slavery. The levelling process, in this way, wreaks its vengeance upon the heads of those who uphold its infallibility—and it perpetuates its curse. Doubt it not. On the whole, the materialistic conception of history, as propounded by Carl Marx,—the conception that the fundamental factor in the development of any nation, is the economic factor, that is the way in which a nation produces and


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 exchanges its commodities,—is the narrowest, shallowest, most sordid, and most pernicious that ever was conceived by a man with any pretension to learning and wisdom. It is a shallow well, indeed, that of Marx, and its water withal is brackish. I turn away from it, thinking how well it could be filtered, if it were allowed to pass through the channels of religion, at least, and the arts. For these can be of great help, in spite of the breeding theory of Mendel.

More than that. For I believe—holding as I do to the idea of the potentiality of the Unknown and the Unknowable—that religion and the arts can confound Mendel in the end and upset all his demonstrations about the pea, when they are applied to man. Neither science, then, nor education is a panacea. But a reverence for the Unknown, an open mind, a sense of awe before the Unknowable, a quickening hope, an implicit faith in its potentialities,—these will accomplish the miracle that Marx and Mendel and Darwin have only partly


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 and described. For the laborer without a spirituality, without a developed sense for the beautiful and the true,—the laborer, or the capitalist for that matter, without intellectual and spiritual needs, is a slave, and the son of a slave, and the parent of a slave, even though he become the chief of all the Soviets of Russia. And neither through Mendelism, nor Darwinianism, nor Socialism alone can he achieve his own redemption and freedom. Doubt not that. And by the way, was it not Wagner who said that the redemption of Society is possible only through music?


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HAT have I brought with me from the Paradise of the New World, you ask. What have I gained in the country of gold and iron, of freedom and trusts? How much have I accumulated in the land of plenty and profusion—how big a draft do I present at the Imperial Ottoman Bank? Ah, yes. These are pertinent questions, my neighbor. I went to America with a lean purse; I came back, alas, not purseful but purseless. Do not conclude from this, however, that I am poor. On the contrary. I deposit in many banks, including the Bank of Wisdom; and my credit is good in many kingdoms, including the Kingdom of the Soul. And of a truth, the more I draw on my accounts, no matter how big the sum, the bigger my balance becomes. This is, indeed, a miracle of the Soul—a paradox not defined or described in the illustrated catalogues of market-men.

"His best companions, innocense [sic] and health; And his best riches, ignorance of wealth."


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 I come back to my native country with no ulterior political or maleficent purpose. I am not here to undermine the tottering throne of his Eminence the Patriarch; nor to rival his Excellency the Pasha in his political jobbery and his éclat; nor to supersede any decorated chic Bey in office; nor to erect a filature near that of my rich neighbor; nor to apply for a franchise to establish a trolley-car system in the Lebanons. "Blameless and harmless the sons of God." And I share with them at least the last attribute, Excellencies and worthy Signiors. I return to my native country on a little—er—private business,—only, perhaps, to see again the cyclamens of the season. And I have brought with me from the Eldorado across the Atlantic a pair of walking shoes and three books published respectively in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. The good Grey Poet, the Sage of Concord, and the Recluse of Walden are my only companions in this grand congé. Whitman and Emerson and Thoreau are come to pay you


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 a visit, my beloved Syria. But who are these strangers? I am asked. Why do they come so late? What is their mission to Syria, that is to say, their design upon her? Ah, dear Mother, my companions are neither missionaries, nor tourists, nor philanthropists. They come not to shed tears with you—like the paid mourners of antiquity; they come not to gaze at your ruins and rob you of the remnants of your temples and your gods; they come not to pity your poverty and trim the sacred ragged edges of the garment of your glory. My companions knew and loved you before you became the helpless victim of cormorant hierarchs and decorated obscurants and rogues. Not that they ever visited you in the flesh; but clothed in the supernal and eternal mystery of genius, they continue to live and journey in the world of the human spirit, even like your ancient cedars, even like your sacred legends.

With a little digression I shall endeavor to make my companions better known to


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 you. The elecampane, that most peculiar of perennial herbs, is not a stranger to your roads and fields. Its odor is strong, acrid, penetrating; the slightest touch of it has an immediate and enduring effect. When you approach it, you must, willy-nilly, carry away with you some token of its love. And one of its idiosyncracies is that it only blossoms when the hills and fields are shorn of every other variety of flower. It is the message of Spring to Autumn—the billet doux, as it were, of May to September. It bursts with beautiful yellow flowers, to console the almost flowerless season. And when all the bushes and herbs of the Lebanon coppices and fields are glorying in their fragrance and beauty, the elecampane waves its mucilaginous and wilted branches in perfect self-satisfaction. But when Nature withholds her favors from the wild daughters of Spring, the flowering of the elecampane begins in good earnest. Ay, the life beautiful is not denied even this bold and ungainly plant, which is ubiquitous in these


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 hills. On the waysides, in the fields, on the high ridges, in the pine forests, over terraces and under grapevines, it grows and glories in its abundance—and its pungent generosity. Ah, how it fans and flatters the thistle; how it nestles round the lilies of the valley; how it sprawls beneath the grapevines; how it waves its pennant of self-satisfaction on yonder height! Here, beneath an oak or a pine, it stands erect in its arrogance; there, it is bending over the humble crocus, or sheltering the delicate and graceful cyclamen.

Walt Whitman is the elecampane in the field of poetry.

The furze, on the other hand, is the idol of your heaths and copses. This plant, of course, is not without its thorn. But its smooth and tender stem, its frail and fra- grant yellow blossoms,—those soft, wee shells of amber,—the profusion and the symmetry of its bushes, the delicacy of its tone of mystery, all tend to emphasize its attractive and inviting charms. A furze bush in full bloom is the crowning glory


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 of your heaths and copses, thickly overgrown. In the wadis below, one seldom meets with the furze; it only abounds on hill-tops, among gray cliffs and crannied rocks and boulders, where even the fern and the poppy feel at home. And a little rest on these smooth, fern-spread rock-couches, under the cool and shady arbor of furze-bushes, in their delicate fragrance of mystery, is ineffable delight to a pilgrim soul. Here, indeed, is a happy image of Transcendentalism. Here is Emerson for me—a furze-bush in full bloom.

Now let me go down the valley to introduce to you the third of my companions, the stern and unique Thoreau. You are no doubt acquainted with the terebinth and the nenuphar. They are very rare in your valleys and forests. The terebinth is mantled in a vague and mystic charm; its little heart-shaped pods, filled with gum and incense, bespeak an esoteric beauty. Not that Thoreau ever dealt in incense. What he had of it, he kept for his own beatific self.


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 Yes, the terebinth is a symbol of the moralist in Thoreau. And the nenuphar, with its delicate and cream-colored blossoms,—the choicest in your dells and dales,—is a symbol of the poet. The first represents for me the vigorous and ruthless thinker; the second, the singer, sweet and quaint. For does not the terebinth stand alone in a pine grove, or beneath some mighty ridge, or over some high and terribly abrupt precipice? And so, too, the nenuphar. The terebinth, moreover, can bear fruits of poetry. Graft upon it a pistachio and it will give forth those delicious and aesthetic nuts,—those little emeralds in golden shells,—so rare outside of Asia.

These, then, are my companions, dear Mother. The terebinth and the nenuphar of your valleys—Thoreau. The flowering furze-bush on your hilltips, with a smooth and mighty boulder for its throne—Emerson. The acrid elecampane in your fields, on your waysides, in your vineyards—Whitman.


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 And if the symbol does not fit the subject, or the subject is not at ease in the symbol, the fault is not mine; for my American walking shoes are new, and my Oriental eyes are old. But those who slip on the way, believe me, often see deeper than those who do not.


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ATURE in Mt. Lebanon is as beautiful as she is exacting. The seasons obey her command and are ever ready to take up their cue when she speaks. What wonder after a million rehearsals and one! They are as punctual as a solar eclipse, as mild as the breath of Olympus, as equable as the humor of an Oriental sage. And never late or in a hurry. Neither impatient are they to enter ere the curtain rises, nor querulous should it ever rise too soon. It seldom does. And the seasons follow one another with the precision of marching regiments. They do not step on each other's heels, nor do they leave a vacancy between them for the imps of chaos. No, they neither borrow nor steal from each other in these climes. Winter, for instance, has as much respect for the calendar as the moon; he never makes his appearance before Autumn folds his tent and silently steals away. Nor is Autumn so selfish and inconsiderate as to


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 remain in the lap of Nature, when Winter's steps are heard behind the gate of Mt. Sanneen. Spring is never shy and coquettish in taking up the cue. We do not have to go a-searching for her when the time comes as we often do in other parts of the world, especially in and around New York.

My native horizon is not very far away, O my Brother of Manhattan, and not as alien as it seems. Leave the cloud-draped domes, and the sombre sky, and the sleety streets of our beloved City for a spell and come with me to the Theatre of the Ancient World, to the land of legend and prophecy, to the vine-clad hills of Tammuz and the cedar-crowned heights of Lebanus. Don't look up your geography, or your Bible, or your Baedeker. We are not now concerned with these. Behold! Winter, in giant strides across the hills, makes his way to the Mediterranean. He shakes the snow from his feet at the portals of Mt. Hermon, and, lightly over the new-born cyclamens in the terraced land, he hastens to meet


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 Nature and say farewell. He utters his last speech and makes his exit with grand Thespian effect. And as his last echo dies away beyond the nascent warmth of the first sun-kissed cedar bough, the footsteps of Spring are heard in every glen, are seen in bud and clove, are sensed in the unsealed spices of copse and dale. She comes anon with her singing gardens and sighing zephyrs, with her verdant fields and dancing bowers. Yea, she is punctual and refulgent in her appearance as Venus or Jupiter in the Lebanon sky. Here is order, equableness, continuity;—a training, indeed, that mars not art;—a discipline that shakes even the incense in its terebinth sack from its sleep and brings the very salamander to attention. Here Nature beautifully performs the Master-Dramatist's masterpiece. And here too the weather prophets are safe in pursuing their business. They can forecast with the utmost precision, without offending either Dramatist or Actors. Between Nature in my native hills and the learned folk who


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 write the calendar there is the deepest mutual sympathy and respect.

The seasons come and go, but the mark of their footsteps on my native horizon are ineffaceable. Here Time has erected eternal monuments to his departing children. In Mt. Sanneen, rising in the East over a dozen peaks slurred together, we behold Winter shrouded in snow; in the tiger-spotted escarpments, in the grey cliffs, barren and amorphous, forming a huge wall to the deep gorge in which the river flows, we have a fitting monument to Autumn; while in the lowlands facing the Mediterranean, the orange orchards and the olive groves are beautiful monuments to Summer and Spring, wrapped in the light green of the fields and buried in the warm brown soil of life perennial. Indeed, my native horizon is a cyclorama of all the seasons. And the sun rising in Summer over the snow-covered tomb of Winter, from behind the serrate and spotted peaks of Mt. Sanneen, presents a deeply suggestive contrast. It makes me think of the snow


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 flakes of humanity melting under the sun of life, and flowing in the valley of love and hope, between the deep canyon-walls of pain and joy, to reach the shore of the Eternal. (Now, this is pompous and overwrought, but the Mara of my Arabic is on me—and on my race.) And I would that the seasons of the year were a fitting background to the human symbol; but what hope is there for a race that lives so close to Nature and profits not by it? Cattle huddle together in a storm. The birds in their migrations follow their leader. Even the bees, even the ants—but the proverbial wisdom of the ages is as futile as the warning of Nature. My poor, proud, distressed and distracted little race, now in its autumn days—will it survive the approaching storms of the coming winter? Will it ever regain the glory of its ancient springs? Will its children, who are still pagans at heart, ever realize again the beauty of art in Nature and the power of Nature in art? Scattered in every continent, looking in every


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 the one pointing to Self—for a savior, and chopping commerce, meanwhile, or rhetoric, or gangrened nationalism on their decayed backlogs of life, will they ever become sensible again of the Awakening? The harbinger of Spring, will they know him should he appear? The herald of Summer, will they receive him should he come? O, ye weak races of Man, what are you going to do with the few soul-Titans that are of you and with you ? Will you deliver them as bound captives to a foreign despot? Will you sell them for a decoration? Ye little peoples of the land, ye disinherited and downtrodden children of the earth, the big throbbing heart of the world is with you. So be you with your soul-Titans, and rise to the summits of love and light and freedom and power. (Sometimes I forget that I am writing in English and to people little used to dithyramb and dogma outside a certain form of art.) But the majestic beauty of my native horizon is marred, alas, by the pitiable


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 poverty and squalor of human life. And what is one to do with one's heart? Here is a broad verdant slope, rising high to the very feet of Mt. Sanneen; it is studded with clusters of pink gable houses, with pyramids of white and bluish stone;—it is at night a brilliant spectacle—a sight for the gods. And no less beautiful is it in the day. Behold these homes, half-hidden in mulberry and poplar and surrounded with thick pine forests, rising from terrace to terrace, like the steps of an altar with its objects of decoration, its flowers and icons and wax figures. Indeed, this makes a most beautiful altar to Nature. But the life, think on the life behind this outward show, under these trappings and decorations. Once I likened the village on the breast of that gentle and hospitable mountain to the decorations on the breast of a successful Turkish diplomat. And the diplomat protested Turkish fashion—Istagferullah effendum! Which means, in unequivocal language, Allah forgive you, if you have not flattered me—Allah forgive


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 me, if you have. And it is well at times that ambiguity, like a summer cloud, should temper the noon-day heat of our thought. For what difference is there—the thought was eating into me, while I trifled with the image—what difference is there between the life that deifies a silk rag or a piece of copper and the life that soils its lips and forehead in the dust before them. Here are the people and their decorated nobilities.... The Lethean breezes, blowing in the evening from the East, awaken the pagan in man,—the artist,—the lover of sheer beauty. And often, in contemplating this fascinating village, my fancy would westward wing itself. And my fellow man and the destiny of my race would no longer trouble me. The little lights behind the glass casements of the gabled houses, fixed and faint as the distant stars, are like so many diamonds in the crown of some sylvan goddess. And in places where the houses are crowded, piled above each other, a cascade of light in a frame of shimmering


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 purple foiliated by the bright pink gables, suggests to me the skyscrapers of New York at dusk or the electric legends of its White Way at night. And that renews my hope as well as my anxiety. The weak races, I ask, why are they so strong in their land of adoption, so weak in their native land,—so bold and daring there, so docile here? And the moon disappears in the clouds, as if she did not care to listen. I look with half-shut eyes and in the seen I see the unseen. Behind the clouds I behold the moon smiling mystically; within the darkness I see the potential spark of the eternal fire; and behind the faint lights of the village I see the moving, darkness of the human soul. And so, I say to myself: Depend not always on the known senses; look at things with half-shut eyes. And often I do so. Even with the eye of the soul into things moral and social. I look out of my northern window in the day on a prospect terrible, wild and majestic. The valley below, the deep


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 gorge, the dizzy precipices, the escarpments spotted here and there with laurels, terebinths, scrub oaks, the broad slope on the other side of the river, decked with olives and mulberries and terraced homes, and the hill-tops fringed with pines rising behind and above each other,—all this is beautiful to heholdbehold [sic], especially through half-shut eyes. Thus seen, the grey of the rugged ridges seems to melt and fuse in the bright green of the fields and the sable of the heaths. And between the brown soil on the breast of the hill and the barren cliffs below there is a bond of common sympathy and mutual affection. Yes, under the soil I can see barren cliffs, and under the barren cliffs I behold arable stretches of land. So with Nature, so with Man and the races of Man. In this sense, at least, my native horizon, methinks, is the horizon of my race, and under the seasons of the year are the seasons of my country. Nor are the monuments and temples lacking. For right behind Mt. Sanneen is the Acropolis of Baalbek, and farther East


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 are the ruins of Palmyra. The one is a monument to the Spring, the other to the Summer of my country's past.