rt towards beauty and
happiness--who shall tell us what problems you have resolved,
but we not yet; what certitudes you have acquired, that we have
still to conquer? And if you have truly resolved these problems,
acquired these certitudes, by the aid of some blind and primitive
impulse and not through the intellect, then to what enigma,
more insoluble still, are you not urging us on?"

Such is the leaven that is working in much of the foremost
thinking of our time. The reign of materialism is passing--that
of mysticism waxing in imperative insistence and extent of
sway. And the heart of the nature-mystic rejoices to know that
his master-principle of kinship universal is coming to its own.
Anatole France and Maeterlinck are striving to seize on the
harmonies between the physical, the vegetable, and the animal
spheres--the air and sunshine, the flowers, and the bees; add the
moral and spiritual harmonies, and Mysticism stands complete--
it strives to read the secret of existence as a whole, of the "_elan
vital_" in this or any other world.

CHAPTER XXXIV

PRAGMATIC

The programme laid down in the introductory chapter has been
fulfilled. There has been no attempt to make any single section,
much less the study as a whole, a complete or exhaustive
exposition of its subject matter. The purpose throughout has
been to bring to light the fundamental principles of Nature
Mysticism, to consider the validity of the main criticisms to
which they are subjected, and to illustrate some of their most
typical applications. A formal summary of the conclusions
reached would be tedious and unnecessary. But it may be well
to show that even when brought to the tests imposed by the
reigning Pragmatism, the nature-mystic can justify his existence
and can proselytise with a good conscience.

"Back to the country"--a cry often heard, though generally with
a significance almost wholly economic, or at any rate utilitarian.
It gives expression to the growing conviction that the life of
great cities is too artificial and specialised to permit of a healthy
all-round development of their populations. From the eugenic
point of view, physique is lowered. From the economic point of
view, large areas are deprived of their healthy independence by
the disturbance of the balance of production as between town
and country. Each of these considerations is evidently of
sufficient seriousness to arouse widespread apprehension.

But there is the nat