R. W. E. explained: “Not in the world, but each on his own platform.” WILLIAM STORY objected. The life of an individual was not universal. (!) SOPHIA RIPLEY repeated, “The inner life.” WILLIAM STORY claimed to be an individual, and did not think individual experience could ever meet all minds,—like the story of Ceres, for example. SOPHIA said all experience was universal. I said nothing, but held this colloquy with myself. Thought is the best of human nature; its fulness urges expression: its need of being met, not only by _one_ other but by every other, _craves_ it. This craving is the acknowledgment of the universal experience. What is _purely_ individual is perishable. _Identity_ is to be separated from individuality for this cause. MARGARET said the element of beauty would be wanting to our creations. A fine emotion glowed through features which seem to fall like a soft veil over the soul, while it could scarce do more than animate those that were obtuse and coarse in every outline. (!) “Then,” said WILLIAM STORY, and my heart thanked the _preux chevalier_,—“then something is wanting in the emotion itself.” WILLIAM WHITE said, stupidly, that sunlight could not fall with equal charm on rocks and the green grass. (!) I asked if the rock could not give what it did not receive? Flung back by rugged points and relieved by dark shadows, was not the sunlight itself transfigured? STORY said every face had its own beauty. No act that was natural could be ungraceful. EMERSON said that we all did sundry graceful acts, in our caps and tunics, which we never could do again, which we never wanted to do again. MARGARET said, at last we had touched the point. We could not restore the childhood of the world, but could we not admire this simple plastic period, and gather from it some notion of the Greek genius? R. W. E. thought this legitimate. He would have it that we could not determine the origin of a mythos, but we might fulfil Miss Fuller’s intention. MARGARET said history reconciled us to life, by showing that man had redeemed himself. Genius needed that encouragement. Not _Genius_, SOPHIA RIPLEY thought; common natures needed it, but Genius was self-supported. MARGARET said it might be the consolation of Genius. MRS. RUSSELL asked why Miss Fuller found so much fault with the present. MARGARET _had_ no fault to find with it. She took facts as they were. Every age did something toward fulfilling the cycle of mind. The work of the Greeks was not ours. SOPHIA RIPLEY asked if the mythology had been a prophecy of the Greek mind to itself, or if the nation had experienced life in any wide or deep sense.