despise them he must have the air of one who would not give a pin's head for anybody. He must appear always content. ... Poushkin was a clever man and a deep nature. 31 _Metaphysics against their will_.--It often occurs to us that evil is not altogether so, unnecessary, after all. Diseases, humiliations, miseries, deformity, failure, and all the rest of those plants which flourish with such truly tropical luxuriance on our planet, are probably essential to man. Poets sing plentifully of sorrow. "_Nous sommes les apprentis, la douleur est notre maître_," said de Musset. On this subject everybody can bring forth a quotation, not only from the philosophers, who are a cold, heartless tribe, but from tender, gentle, or sentimental poets. Doubtless one knows many instances where suffering has profited a man. True also, one knows many cases of the direct opposite. And these are all cases of profound, earnest, outrageous, incredibly outrageous suffering. Look at Tchekhov's men and women--plainly drawn from life, or at any rate, exceedingly life-' like. Uncle Vanya, an old man of fifty, cries beside himself all over the stage, "My life is done for, my life is done for," and senselessly shoots at a harmless professor. The hero in _A Tedious Story_ was a quiet, happy man engaged in work of real importance, when suddenly a horrible disease stole upon him, not killing him, but taking him between its loathsome jaws. But what for? Then Tchekhov's girls and women! They are mostly young, innocent, fascinating. And always there lies in wait for them round every corner a meaningless, rude, ugly misery which murders even the most modest hopes. They sob bitterly, but fate takes no notice. How explain such horrors? Tchekhov is silent. He does not weep himself--he left off long ago, and besides it is a humiliating thing for a grown-up person to do. Setting one's teeth, it is necessary either to keep silent or--to explain. Well, metaphysics under takes the explanation. Where common sense stops, metaphysics must take another stride. "We have seen," it says, "many instances where at first glance suffering seemed absurd and needless, but where later on a profound significance was revealed. Thus it may be that what we cannot explain may find its explanation in time. 'Life is lost,' cries Uncle Vanya, 'Life is done for,' repeat the voices of girls innocently perishing--yet nothing is lost. The very horror which a drowning man experiences goes to show that the drowning is nothing final. It is only the beginning of greater events. The less a man has fulfilled in experience, the more in him remains of unsatisfied passion and desire, the greater are the grounds for thinking that his essence cannot be destroyed, but must manifest itself somehow or other in the universe. Voluntary asceticism and self-denial, such common human phenomena, help to solve the riddle. Nobody compels a man, he imposes suffering and abstinence on himself. It is an incomprehensible instinct, but