“Æ’S” “CANDLE OF VISION.”—“Æ’s” _Candle of Vision_ is not a book for everybody, yet I wish that everybody might read it. Rarely and more rarely does any artist or poet interest himself in the processes of his mental and spiritual life, with the consequence, so often deplored by Mr. Penty, that books on æsthetics, philosophy, and, above all, psychology, are left to be written by men who have no immediate experience of what they are writing of. “Æ’s” narrative, and criticism of his personal experiences may be said to take the form of intimate confessions made _pour encourager les autres_. For, happily for us, he is an artist who is also a philosopher, a visionary who is also an “intellectual”; and, being interested in both phases of his personality, he has had the impulse and the courage to express both. What the ordinary mind—the mind corrupted by false education—would say to “Æ’s” affirmations concerning his psychological experiences, it would not be difficult to forecast. What is not invention, it would be said, is moonshine, and what is neither is a pose to be explained on some alienist hypothesis. Only readers who can recall some experiences similar to those described by “Æ” will find themselves able to accept the work for what it is—a statement of uncommon fact; and only those who have developed their intuition to some degree will be able to appreciate the spirit of truth in which the _Candle of Vision_ is written. A review of such work is not to be undertaken by me, but I have made a few notes on some passages. * * * * * Page 2. “_I could not so desire what was not my own, and what is our own we cannot lose.... Desire is hidden identity._” This is a characteristic doctrine of mysticism, and recurs invariably in all the confessions. Such unanimity is an evidence of the truth of the doctrine, since it is scarcely to be supposed that the mystics borrow from one another. But the doctrine, nevertheless, is difficult for the mere mind to accept, for it involves the belief that nothing happens to us that is not ourselves. Character in that event is destiny—to quote a variant of “Æ’s” sentence; and our lives are thus merely the dramatisation of our given psychology. Without presuming to question the doctrine, I feel a reserve concerning its absoluteness. Fate appears to me to be above destiny in the same sense that the old lady conceived that there was One above that would see that Providence did not go too far. To the extent that character is destiny or, as “Æ” says, desire is hidden identity, a correct psychological forecast would be at the same time a correct temporal forecast. And while this may be true, in the abstract and under, so to say, ideal conditions, I cannot yet agree that everything that happens to the individual is within his character. The unforeseeable, the margin of what we call Chance, allows for events that belong to Fate rather than to Destiny. * * * * *