reflect upon this, we shall find that the whole tendency is not to evil but to good. It is by considering the past history of man that we can learn how much he has gained through this cruel policy of Nature. . . . Thereof he has found Firm roadway between lustfulness and pain; Has half transferred the battle to his brain, From bloody ground; He will not read her good, Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures; Through that old devil of the thousand lures, Through that dense hood: Through terror, through distrust; The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live; Through all that makes of him a sensitive Abhorring dust. Which means that, if we will really think about the matter from an evolutional standpoint, we shall find that it has been through the destruction of the weak that mankind has become strong. At first he knew only desire, like an animal; his wants were only like those of an animal. But gradually nobler desires came to him, because they were forced upon him by his constant struggle against death. He learns that one must be able to control one's desire as well as to fight against other enemies. From the day man discovered that the greatest enemy was Self, he became a higher being, he was no longer a mere animal. When the poet speaks of him as "transferring the battle to his brain from bloody ground," he means that the struggle of existence to-day has become a battle of minds, instead of being, as it used to be, a trial of mere physical strength. We must every one of us fight, but the fight is now intellectual. Notwithstanding this progress, we are still very stupid, for we try to explain the laws of the Universe according to our little feeble conceptions of moral law. Or, as the poet says, we insist on thinking about Nature "with the passion Self obscures"--with that selfishness in our hearts which judges everything to be bad that gives us pain. Until we can get rid of that selfishness, we shall never understand Nature. Now the question is, shall we ever be able to understand Nature? I shall let the poet answer that question in his own way. It is an optimistic way, and it has the great merit of being quite different from anything else written upon the subject by any English poet. But that the senses still Usurp the station of their issue mind, He would have burst the chrysalis of the blind: As yet he will; As yet he will, she prays, Yet will when his distempered devil of Self;-- The glutton for her fruits, the wily elf In shifting rays;-- That captain of the scorned; The coveter of life in soul and shell, The fratricide, the thief, the infidel, The hoofed and horned;-- He singularly doomed To what he execrates and writhes to shun;-- WHEN FIRE HAS PASSED HIM VAPOUR TO THE SUN, AND SUN RELUMED.