Even the ancient ‘will-power’—the logical will-power that men have professed to understand so well—even this is being transformed in its turn, and moulded beneath the pressure of mighty, deep searching, inexplicable laws. The last refuges are disappearing, and men are drawing closer to each other. Far above words and acts do they judge their fellows—nay, far above thought—for that which they see, though they understand it not, lies well beyond the domain of thought. And this is one of the great signs by which the spiritual periods I spoke of before shall be known. It is felt on all sides that the conditions of work-a-day life are changing, and the youngest of us already differ entirely in speech and action from the men of the preceding generation. A mass of useless conventions, habits, pretences, and intermediaries are being swept into the gulf; and it is by the invisible alone that, though we know it not, nearly all of us judge each other. If I enter your room for the first time you will not pronounce the secret sentence that, according to the laws of practical psychology, each man pronounces in the presence of his fellow. In vain shall you try to tell me whither you have been to learn who I am, but you shall come back to me, bearing the weight of unspeakable certitudes. Your father, perhaps, would have judged me otherwise, and would have been mistaken. We can but believe that man will soon touch man, and that the atmosphere will change. ‘Have we,’ asks Claude de Saint-Martin, the great ‘unknown philosopher,’ ‘have we advanced one step further on the radiant path of enlightenment, that leads to the simplicity of men?’ Let us wait in silence: perhaps ere long we shall be conscious of ‘the murmur of the gods.’ THE PRE-DESTINED THE PRE-DESTINED THEY are known to most men, and there are few mothers who have not seen them. Perhaps they are as inevitable as life’s sorrows; and the men among whom they dwell become the better for the knowledge of them, and the sadder, and the more gentle. They are strange. As children, life seems nearer to them than to other children; they appear to suspect nothing, and yet is there in their eyes so profound a certainty that we feel they must know all, that there must have been evenings when they found time to tell themselves their secret. At the moment when their brothers are still groping their way blindly in the mysterious land between birth and life, they have already understood; they are erect, ready with hand and soul. In all haste, but wisely and with minute care, do they prepare themselves to live; and this very haste is a sign upon which mothers, the discreet, unsuspected confidants of all that cannot be told, can scarce bring themselves to look.