intelligence which thinks itself so enlightened; and when women inspire
love, they are not without the proud joy of this triumph. Their vanity
is not altogether baseless; but a profound love is a light and a calm, a
religion and a revelation, which in its turn despises these lesser
triumphs of vanity. Great souls wish nothing but the great, and all
artifices seem shamefully puerile to one immersed in the infinite.


_Man's Useless Yearning_


Eternal effort is the note of modern morality. This painful restless
"becoming" has taken the place of harmony, equilibrium, joy, that is to
say, of "being." We are all fauns and satyrs aspiring to become angels,
ugly creatures labouring at our embellishment, monstrous chrysalids
trying to become butterflies. Our ideal is no longer the tranquil beauty
of the soul, it is the anguish of Laocoon fighting with the hydra of
evil. No longer are there happy and accomplished men; we are candidates,
indeed, for heaven, but on earth galley-slaves, and we row away our life
in the expectation of harbour. It seems possible that this perfecting of
which we are so proud is nothing else but a pretentious imperfection.

The "becoming" seems rather negative than positive; it is the lessening
of evil, but is not itself the good; it is a noble discontent, but is by
no means felicity. This ceaseless pursuit of an endless end is a
generous madness, but is not reason; it is the yearning for what can
never be, a touching malady, but it is not wisdom. Yet there is none who
may not achieve harmony; and when he has it, he is within the eternal
order, and represents the divine thought at least as clearly as a flower
does, or a solar system. Harmony seeks nothing that is outside herself.