acles of its compensations! The sense of becoming that it gives,
even in its defeats, the gladness that ripples in its sob-strangled
throat!

The day for asceticism is gone, or shall we say the night? We are not
afraid of sense delights. We are intent upon living on all sides of our
natures, roundly and naturally. You have a fine gospel of work and I
congratulate you upon it, but you make no mention of the purpose of it
all. It must not be work for work's sake. "When I heard the learned
astronomer--" says Whitman. Do you remember? He caught in one hour the
whole majesty, caught to himself the wonder that was unseen by the
watching astronomers. Somehow you feel the learned ones had made a
mistake in calculating so long that they had no time to see with
personal eyes the glory of the stars, and that Whitman had been
philosopher and had gained where they failed. The inspiration of the
poet, of the painter, of the economist, and biologist, is in the
revelation which they receive of what to do and why to do. For this
reason philosophy, which treats of the life and works of man, is in the
highest sense sociological. The generalisations of philosophy go to
improve our methods so that we may have greater proneness for sense of
delight and greater possibility for sense delight. Why, what else is
there? You are a poet, and you give an unrestorable day, when the sun is
shining and the hills lie purple in the distance, to writing a sonnet.
If you do so merely to employ yourself, it must be that the wolf of
despair is at your being's door. You have come to the end, and the sun
and the hills do not matter. You and they have parted company. But if
you write, impelled by the wish that others should read and recognise,
read and remember, and grow to know and feel better, and perhaps to love
the sun and hills better, then is yours a work of love, and it will be
made good to you, so that for the day which you have not seen, your
night shall be instinct with light. And if your labours are more
especially in the service of art, then, also, with each approach toward
expression, you are warmed through with the delight of achievement.

Is my meaning quite dashed away by this torrent of speech? It is simply
this: Before we think we feel, and the end of thinking is feeling. The
century of Voltaire and Dr. Johnson held that man is rational, the
century of James, Ribot, Lange, and Wundt is thrilled to the heart with
the doctrine that first, last,