s brow,
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,"--

must be my theme. In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner
in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly; and I know not
what such an association as yours intends, nor what you ask of those
whom you invite to address you, unless it be to lead you from the
surface-glamour of existence, and for an hour at least to make you
heedless to the buzzing and jigging and vibration of small interests
and excitements that form the tissue of our ordinary consciousness.
Without further explanation or apology, then, I ask you to join me in
turning an attention, commonly too unwilling, to the profounder
bass-note of life. Let us search the lonely depths for an hour
together, and see what answers in the last folds and recesses of things
our question may find.

{33}

I.

With many men the question of life's worth is answered by a
temperamental optimism which makes them incapable of believing that
anything seriously evil can exist. Our dear old Walt Whitman's works
are the standing text-book of this kind of optimism. The mere joy of
living is so immense in Walt Whitman's veins that it abolishes the
possibility of any other kind of feeling:--

"To breathe the air, how delicious!
To speak, to walk, to seize something by the hand!...
To be this incredible God I am!...
O amazement of things, even the least particle!
O spirituality of things!
I too carol the Sun, usher'd or at noon, or as now, setting;
I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the
growths of the earth....

I sing to the last the equalities, modern or old,
I sing the endless finales of things,
I say Nature continues--glory continues.
I praise with electric voice,
For I do not see one imperfection in the universe,
And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last."

So Rousseau, writing of the nine years he spent at Annecy, with nothing
but his happiness to tell:--

"How tell what was neither said nor done nor even thought, but tasted
only and felt, with no object of my felicity but the emotion of
felicity itself! I rose with the sun, and I was happy; I went to walk,
and I was happy; I saw 'Maman,' and I was happy; I left her, and I was
happy. I rambled through the woods and over the vine-slopes, I
wandered in the valleys, I read, I lounged, I {34} worked in the
garden, I gathered the fruits, I helped at the indoor work, and
h