The war left deep scars upon Maeterlinck’s spirit; they are reflected in such essays and plays as _The Wrack of the Storm_, _Belgium at War_, _The Burgomaster at Stilemonde_, _The Cloud that Lifted_, and _The Power of the Dead_. Some of the essays, or chapters, in the book first mentioned, deal with psychometry, the interest which is expanded in other books like _The Great Secret_, _Our Eternity_, _The Unknown Guest_, and _The Light Beyond_. That man is the product of unseen forces, that he is molded by “hidden powers,” that humanity and nature are always closely linked, were tenets that underlay such books as _Treasure of the Humble_, _Life and Flowers_, and _The Life of the Bee_. He became a beekeeper that he might study at first-hand the traits of these workers and apply their analogy to humanity--much as Dallas Lore Sharp has done more recently in _The Spirit of the Hive_. In the beehives and the garden, Maeterlinck finds the same complications and conflicts, the same “domination of the spirit of the race,” as among men. In an essay in his earlier book, _Treasure of the Humble_, he expressed a surety which has been verified with the passing of the years: “A time may come perhaps--and many things herald its approach--a time will come, perhaps, when our souls will know each other without the intermediary of the senses.” To penetrate beyond the tangible things of life requires courage but brings light to the spirit. In his plays, _Ariadne and Blue Beard_ and _Sister Beatrice_, translated by Bernard Miall into English verse (1916), and _The Miracle of Saint Anthony_, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (1918), Maeterlinck has suggested the neglected but magic “key” which may gain for us new adventures into “the prohibitions of the tangible world.” The _premonition_ of his earlier plays has become the _intuition_ which penetrates the unknown and supernatural. Life has been symbolized by him as “a garden,” as an “inner temple,” as analogous to the world of plants and “the swarm” of the bees. He seldom reveals passionate feeling in his writings, but he exemplifies search for truth, “care for moral stoic beauty.”[90] Intuition, as interpreted by Bergson, he has expanded into the “raison mystique” by which one may penetrate the unknown and the mystic. There are shades of gloom and sadness in many of his plays; his characters are sometimes weak in conflict with the forces about them; there are hints of fatalism in plays like _The Intruder_, _The Death of Tintagiles_, and _Interior_, but the keynote of Maeterlinck, in his maturity, has been that of spiritual progress and mystic idealism. FOOTNOTES: [85] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1911. [86] New York, 1925, p. 161. [87] _On Emerson and Other Essays_ by Maurice Maeterlinck, translated by Montrose J. Moses, New York, 1912. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co. [88] _The Plays of Maurice Maeterlinck_, translated by Richard Hovey, Chicago, 1894-96.