In Holland he was unhappy. He felt fear like a child, in that melancholy country, filled with the inexplainable silences of water; strange, too dim shadow-lighting; and a sky where rain clouds shift. The brush of Franz Hals won him. He says that if genius ever proved itself nature’s outlaw, it is in the paintings Hals made after eighty. Then to Hals came fresh fluency, supreme disdain of details. Then genius deluged him with the power to fling forth reality. He refuses to worship Rubens, because Rubens never suffered. He who has not suffered can not attain excellence. But Rubens touched his painter’s sense to emotion. Rubens has all greatnesses, all richnesses. But he has not suffered! Therefore I refuse to place him among the few. Masters are always alone, bowed beneath weight of lofty power. He dwells upon the prolific exuberance of the few who take no account of creative energy. At length they sweep beyond human, beyond material limits. Dürer was one of these, when, to illustrate little books, he made designs too grandiose for walls of antique palaces, vainly dreaming there would be at least a few who could comprehend him. Redon lived the life worth while. What a vulgar stupidity is money beside it! It can give neither ideas, emotions, nor even comprehension or appreciation of what money can buy. The pure joy of the heart is honey. It dwells hidden in deep centers of flower-gold. It is not easy to find nor procure. God has to send his winged messengers to collect the honey of the heart. Seeing is supposed to be something of general possession. The fact is, it is unusual. It is not eyes which keep men from being blind. Once some savages from Tierra del Fuego came to France. Redon looked at them. He called them proud, haughty, cruel, powerful, grotesque. They made him vision the perished primitive world. He found in them grandeur. He saw all the other grandeurs of civilization, too, shine in their eyes. He enjoyed their uncorrupted, plastic beauty. They were rare bronzes; fine, firm. They had not learned the error of decoration. He found nudity sublime. He compared them with luxurious, motionless, royally expanded, radiant flowers of tropic India. He longed to see their bronzed and splendid flesh encircled with monstrous forest growths, or stretched out on sand that is hard and smooth. Chamfort thought that people with cold, reasoning minds exist, but only the impassioned know how to live; I too am most grateful for the rare times I have had strength to leap petty, picket fences which shut in the too safe, the usually relied upon; when I have dared, kept to faith of self. They do wrong who mock the testimony of the saints, the seers, such as Saint Teresa of Avila. There must be facts beyond the registering of commonplace faculties. Just as there are musicians and painters, with their special endowments, there are people great in _soul-power_, possessing, perhaps, extra-terrestrial vision.