While thus obliged to view all his achievements through the atmosphere of creative mysticism, in weighing his manifold qualities, it is well always to remember that there were achievements, and those of the very highest order. His mysticism was the mysticism of practical life rather than of inactive ideality. His faith was of value to him in giving definiteness to energy otherwise vague and fitful. His all-potential enthusiasm subordinated to one idea every erratic and incoherent aspiration. It gave his life a fixedness of purpose which lust, avarice, and every appetite combined could not have given without it; so that while he brooded with misanthropic wistfulness he did not shirk any fancied duty, even when attended by pain and misfortune. His was not a cloistered inspiration, but an overwhelmingly active enthusiasm. There was in him no longing after a perfect life; in his own eyes his life was perfect. No restless questionings over the unknowable; there was no unknowable. His oblique imagination encompassed all worlds and penetrated all space. His positivism bound the metaphysical no less firmly than the material. Abstract conceptions were more tangible than concrete facts. Realities were but accidents; ideas were the only true realities. The highway of the heavens which to profoundest investigation is dusty with the débris of an evolving universe, to this self-sufficient sailor was as plain as the king's road from Seville to Cádiz. [Sidenote: ANOMALIES AND ABERRATIONS.]