What did the critics mean when they used to say that never again in our generation would there come another Bernhardt? They didn’t mean that there would be no other great actresses because they were writing of actresses, all the time, whom they considered great. In an argument they would talk largely of Bernhardt’s personality. Let them call it personality if they are using the better Oriental meaning of the word: Individuality. But I fear they mean only to limit something unknown so that it may be understood. The more external nullities they bring to prove it personality the more its unknown nature is emphasized. The more talk there is of arresting qualities of person, acts, and dress, of frankness and ferocity, tears and terror—the more talk there is of all its eccentric sanities, the more it recedes and becomes definitely itself, aloof and unnamed. Arthur Symons tried to express it when he wrote of Bernhardt: “Two magics met and united, in the artist and in the woman.” But after all it is only that through the woman you feel the imminence of something as great and impersonal as the sweep of sea and the growth of flowers. In all the arts, whenever the magic of the artist has been united with this other magic the possessor has been of the first great. Michael Angelo and the dark troubled magic of him.... I wonder why, even in those people to whom has come some appreciation of the magic of the artist, there is still so often such strong resentment and distrust of this other magic. Because of their adventures in the great emotions, those who have it loosen new forces of life; they recreate the great passions; _they add something to Fate_. Everyone feels that he has a right to a share in that which the millions are working together in uproar to add to existence. Many long for a share in that which the artists are making in silence for the soul. But who is there except the artist who is willing to feel in this thing the imminence of something beyond life and personality? Who else in the world except the lonely insane, because of their adventures in illusions and hallucinations, ever add anything to Fate? How easy to say that genius is akin to madness. All great antitheses are akin: all unknown things are mysteriously akin, as all known things are naturally akin. But how poignantly akin are the known and unknown! Why does anyone exclude himself from any connection with the infinite?