change, leading us step by step from the soul adrift on the waters
of life to the state where it is definitely oriented and impelled.

There are two distinct currents discernible in this dramatic
revelation of progress from spiritual chaos to spiritual order--
for to order the play must be said to lead, and progress is
implied in its onward movement, if there be anything at all in our
growing modern conviction that _any_ vital faith is better than none
at all. One of the currents in question refers to the means rather
than the end, to the road rather than the goal. It brings us back
to those uncanny soul-adventures by which Strindberg himself won
his way to the "full, rock-firm Certitude" of which the play in
its entirety is the first tangible expression. The elements
entering into this current are not only mystical, but occult. They
are derived in part from Swedenborg, and in part from that
picturesque French dreamer who signs himself "Sar Péladan"; but
mostly they have sprung out of Strindberg's own experiences in
moments of abnormal tension.

What happened, or seemed to happen, to himself at Paris in 1895,
and what he later described with such bewildering exactitude in
his "Inferno" and "Legends," all this is here presented in
dramatic form, but a little toned down, both to suit the needs of
the stage and the calmer mood of the author. Coincidence is law.
It is the finger-point of Providence, the signal to man that he
must beware. Mystery is the gospel: the secret knitting of man to
man, of fact to fact, deep beneath the surface of visible and
audible existence. Few writers could take us into such a realm of
probable impossibilities and possible improbabilities without
losing all claim to serious consideration. If Strindberg has thus