A thing only belongs to us when it is felt--not so much for us personally--as beautiful, necessary, and vivid: only when we have said 'yes' to it. _And therefore our whole evolution can only be to admire as much as possible, to understand as much as possible, to let our feeling have intercourse with as many things as possible_. To contemplate is too little; to understand is too little. Only when we have confirmed a thing from its very roots, confirmed it as necessary, does it really belong to us. 'II faut aimer pour découvrir avec génie.' And so our whole effort must be to overcome what is negative in ourselves, to reject nothing, to kill the critical spirit in ourselves, to strengthen what is positive in us, to assent as much as possible. Here again Verhaeren is in agreement with Nietzsche's last ideals: 'Warding things off, keeping things down, is a waste of energy, a squandering of strength on negative purposes.'[3] Criticism is sterile. Verhaeren is here as ever a relativist of values, for he knows that they are incessantly occupied in a process of transformation in favour of their highest value, and therefore he holds enthusiasm (the symbol of over-estimation) to be more important, in the sense of a higher justice, than what is apparently absolute justice itself. For this is the essential: if in our estimation we often over-estimate things which in any case would preserve their inner value independently of our 'yes' or 'no,' that is not so great a danger as it is a profit that our own souls should grow by means of our admiration. 'Admirer, c'est se grandir.'[4] For if we admire more, and more intensively, than others, we shall ourselves grow richer than those timid ones who content themselves with choice morsels of life instead of grasping life in its entirety, who restrict themselves because they only place themselves in relationship with a part of the world and not with the whole cosmos. The more a man admires, the more he possesses: Il faut admirer tout pour s'exalter soi-même Et se dresser plus haut que ceux qui out vécu De coupables souffrances et de désirs vaincus.[5] For admiration means, in the highest sense, subordinating oneself to other things. _The more a man suppresses his own personal pride, the higher he stands in the moral sense_. For to accentuate oneself and to deny what is not oneself needs less strength than to suppress oneself and to surrender oneself in admiration to all else. Here Verhaeren sees the rise of a new ethical problem. A whole ladder of values is revealed to him in the moral standard of freedom and frankness with which a man can meet his fellows in his admiration; a ladder on whose topmost rung the man stands who rejects nothing whatever, who meets every manifestation of life with ecstasy. To be able to admire more means to grow more oneself: