which he looks with the vague wonder of a child. The happiness of
which he dreams is an inward happiness, and within reach of
successful and unsuccessful alike. And so it may well be that those
content to buffet with their fellows for what are looked on as the
prizes of this world, will still write him down a mere visionary,
and fail to comprehend him. The materialist who complacently defines
the soul as the "intellect plus the emotions," will doubtless turn
away in disgust from M. Maeterlinck's constant references to it as
the seat of something mighty, mysterious, inexhaustible in life. So,
too, may the rigid follower of positive religion, to whom the Deity
is a power concerned only with the judgment, reward, and punishment
of men, protest at his saying that "God, who must be at least as
high as the highest thoughts He has implanted in the best of men,
will withhold His smile from those whose sole desire has been to
please Him; and they only who have done good for sake of good, and
as though He existed not; they only who have loved virtue more than
they loved God Himself, shall be allowed to stand by His side." But,
after all, the genuine seeker after truth knows that what seemed
true yesterday is to-day discovered to be only a milestone on the
road; and all who value truth will be glad to listen to a man who,
differing from them perhaps, yet tells them what seems true to him.
And whereas in the "Treasure of the Humble" he looked on life
through a veil of poetry and dream, here he stands among his fellow-
men, no longer trying to "express the inexpressible," but, in all
simplicity, to tell them what he sees.

"Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is in itself
an act of happiness. It is the flower of a long inner life of joy
and contentment; it tells of peaceful hours and days on the sunniest
heights of our soul." This thought lies at the root of his whole