departure? We might perhaps have found cause for sadness in the gloomy sail that fluttered at her mast; but we who loved each other had 'accepted' life, and we only smiled as we once more recognised the kinship of our thoughts." Yes, it is thus we should act; and though we cannot always smile as the black sail heaves in sight, yet is it possible for us to find in our life something that shall absorb us to the exclusion of sadness, as her love absorbed the woman whose words I have quoted. Complaints of injustice grow less frequent as the brain and the heart expand. It is well to remind ourselves that in this world, whose fruit we are, all that concerns us must necessarily be more conformable with our existence than the most beneficent law of our imagination. The time has arrived perhaps when man must learn to place the centre of his joys and pride elsewhere than within himself. As this idea takes firmer root within us, so do we become more conscious of our helplessness beneath its overwhelming force; yet is it at the same time borne home to us that of this force we ourselves form part; and even as we writhe beneath it, we are compelled to admire, as the youthful Telemachus admired the power of his father's arm. Our own instinctive actions awaken within us an eager curiosity, an affectionate, pleased surprise: why should we not train ourselves thus to regard the instinctive actions of nature? We love to throw the dim light of our reason on to our unconsciousness: why not let it play on what we term the unconsciousness of the universe? We are no less deeply concerned with the one than the other. "After he has become acquainted with the power that is in him," said a philosopher, "one of the highest privileges of man is to realise his individual powerlessness. Out of the very disproportion between the infinite which kills us and this nothing that we are, there arises within us a sensation that is not without grandeur; we feel that we would rather be crushed by a mountain than done to death by a pebble, as in war we would rather succumb beneath the charge of thousands than fall victim to a single arm. And as our intellect lays bare to us the immensity of our helplessness, so does it rob defeat of its sting." Who knows? We are already conscious of moments when the something that has conquered us seems nearer to ourselves than the part of us that has yielded. Of all our characteristics, self-esteem is the one that most readily changes its home, for we are instinctively aware that it has never truly formed part of us. The self-esteem of the courtier who waits on the mighty king soon finds more splendid lodging in the king's boundless power; and the disgrace that may befall him will wound his pride the less for that it has descended from the height of a throne. Were nature to become less indifferent, it would no longer appear so vast. Our unfettered sense of the infinite cannot afford to dispense with one