nal beauty and
order; a glowing mind and cloudless goodwill: these are, perhaps, the
foundation of wisdom. How inexhaustible is the theme of wisdom! A
peaceful aureole surrounds this rich conception. Wisdom includes all
treasures of moral experience, and is the ripest fruit of a well-spent
life. She never ages, for she is the very expression of order, and order
is eternal. Only the wise man tastes all the savour of life and of every
age, because only he can recognise their beauty, dignity and worth. To
see all things in God, to make of one's own life a voyage to the ideal,
to live with gratitude, recollection, kindness and courage--this was the
admirable spirit of Marcus Aurelius. Add to these a kneeling humility
and a devoted charity, and you have the wisdom of God's children, the
undying joy of true Christians.

_The Fascination of Love_

Woman would be loved without reason, without analysis; not because she
is beautiful, or good, or cultivated, or gracious, or spiritual, but
because she exists. Every analysis seems to her an attenuation and a
subordination of her personality to something which dominates and
measures it. She rejects it therefore, and rightly rejects it. For as
soon as one can say "because," one is no longer under the spell; one
appreciates or weighs, and at least in principle one is free. If the
empire of woman is to continue, love must remain a fascination, an
enchantment; once her mystery is gone, her power is gone also. So love
must appear indivisible, irreducible, superior to all analysis, if it is
to retain those aspects of infinitude, of the supernatural and the
miraculous, which constitute its beauty. Most people hold cheaply
whatever they understand, and bow down only before the inexplicable.
Woman's triumph is to demonstrate the obscurity of that male
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 t