“_Rid thyself of the pessimistic error that confuses Life with Lust. The duel between the lust of the emotions and the contemplation of Reason is but in the seeming, as the right hand is against the left. The emotions and the reason but hedge in the highway of thy wayfaring to guide the instincts of life along the way to the highest fulfilment. Joy urges life forward to the achieving; pain turns aside from danger; and the reason is the eye of the emotions. Bereft of reason, the emotions are blind; and the blind in soul are not of the Masterfolk._ _Good and evil are not at duel; these twain are not rigid and separate realities taking sides in a quarrel of the universe; good is the way by which life travels to the achieving of the highest experience; evil is that way by which life falls away from the achieving._ _There is no other good nor evil...._” When Noll laid down the Fragment of The Masterfolk, the evening was well spent. He went to the window and gazed down through the damp night upon the smoke and flare of Paris that steamed in the reek. His mind turned to the busy world at his feet.... As he pulled on his coat, he noticed that there were two volumes in the pockets. He laughed. They were the wisdom of Schopenhauer--of the refuge from life in art and of the refuge from life in asceticism. He left them there. “Tush!” said he--“as if life were given to be evaded!” He put on his cloak and hat, and walked down into the streets. As he turned into the great boulevards, the people were swarming out of the theatres, their eyes still smiling at the comedies. There was the shuffle of feet, and hum of conversation, and laughter that punctuated genial waggeries. Bright cafés were crowded inside and out with the ranks and array of chattering people. He went under an awning and seated himself in a back row; the waiter at his call brought him a foaming tankard of beer. And he sat and sipped and brooded there alone in the midst of the buzzing of the pleasure-hive.