notion of end or purpose is a real phenomenon, although a limited one. Physical science may very well be limited by moral science, and vice versa. But if these two conceptions of the world are in opposition, which must give way?

I still incline to believe that nature is the virtuality of mind, that the soul is the fruit of life, and liberty the flower of necessity, that all is bound together, and that nothing can be done without. Our modern philosophy has returned to the point of view of the Ionians, the puσikol, or naturalist thinkers. But it will have to pass once more through Plato and through Aristotle, through the philosophy of 'goodness' and 'purpose,' through the science of mind.

3d July 1874. Rebellion against common sense is a piece of childishness of which I am quite capable. But it does not last long. I am soon brought back to the advantages and obligations of my situation; I return to a calmer self-consciousness. It is disagreeable to me, no doubt, to realise all that is hopelessly lost to me, all that is now and will be for ever denied to me; but I reckon up my privileges as well as my losses, I lay stress on what I have, and

not only on what I want. And so I escape from that terrible dilemma of all or nothing,' which for me always ends in the adoption of the second alternative. It seems to me at such times that a man may without shame content himself with being some thing and some one—

'Ni si haut, ni si bas

These brusque lapses into the formless, indeterminate state, are the price of my critical faculty. All my former habits become suddenly fluid; it seems to me that I am beginning life over again, and that all my acquired capital has disappeared at a stroke. I am for ever new-born; I am a mind which has never taken to itself a body, a country, an avocation, a sex, a species. Am I even quite sure of being a man, a European, an inhabitant of this earth? It seems to me so easy to be something else, that to be what I am appears to me a mere piece of arbitrary choice. I cannot possibly take an accidental structure of which the value is purely relative, seriously. When once a man has touched the absolute, all that might be other than what it is seems to him indifferent. All these ants pursuing their private ends excite his mirth. He

looks down from the moon upon his hovel; he beholds the earth from the heights of the sun; he considers his life from the point of view of the Hindoo pondering the days of Brahma; he sees the finite from the distance of the infinite, and thenceforward the insignificance of all those things which men hold to be important makes effort ridiculous, passion burlesque, and prejudice absurd.

7th August 1874 (Clarens). — A day perfectly beautiful, luminous, limpid, brilliant.

6

I passed the morning in the churchyard; the Oasis' was delightful. Innumerable sensations, sweet and serious, peaceful and solemn, passed over me. . Around me Russians, English, Swedes, Germans, were sleeping their last sleep under the shadow of the Cubly. The landscape was one vast splendour; the woods were deep and mysterious, the roses full blown; all round me were butterflies- -a noise of wings - the murmur of birds. I caught glimpses through the trees of distant mists, of soaring mountains, of the tender blue of the lake.

A little conjunction of things struck me. Two ladies were tending and watering a

grave; two nurses were suckling their children. This double protest against death had something touching and poetical in it. 'Sleep, you who are dead; we, the living, are thinking of you, or at least carrying on the pilgrimage of the race!'-such seemed to me the words in my ear. It was clear to me that the Oasis of Clarens is the spot in which I should like to rest. Here I am surrounded with memories; here death is like a sleep a sleep instinct with hope.

Hope is not forbidden us, but peace and submission are the essentials.

1st September 1874 (Clarens). — On waking it seemed to me that I was staring into the future with wide startled eyes. Is it indeed to me that these things apply ? 15 Incessant and growing humiliation, my slavery becoming heavier, my circle of action steadily narrower ! . . What is hateful in my situation is that deliverance can never be hoped for, and that one misery will succeed another in such a way as to leave me no breathing space, not even in the future, not even in hope. All possibilities are closed to me, one by one. It is

difficult for the natural man to escape from a dumb rage against inevitable agony.

Noon. An indifferent nature? A Satanic principle of things? A good and just God? Three points of view. The second is improbable and horrible. The first appeals to our stoicism. My organic combination has never been anything but mediocre; it has lasted as long as it could. Every man has his turn, and all must submit. To die quickly is a privilege; I shall die by inches. Well, submit. Rebellion would be useless and senseless. After all,

I belong to the better-endowed half of human-kind, and my lot is superior to the average.

But the third point of view alone can give joy. Only is it tenable ? Is there a particular Providence directing all the circumstances of our life, and therefore imposing all our trials upon us for educational ends? Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual knowledge of the laws of nature? Scarcely. But what this faith makes objective we may hold as subjective truth. The moral being may moralise his sufferings by using natural facts for his own inner education. What he cannot change