disproved by the latest scientific thinkers!"

To come back to the old, honest, downright, heathen recognition of
the midnight, wherein all candles are put out, is quite a salutary
experience. It is good that there should be a few great geniuses that
are unmitigated materialists, and to whom the visible world is
absolutely all there is. One is rendered more tolerant of the
boisterousness of the players when one feels the play ends so finally
and so soon. One is rendered less exacting towards the poor
creatures of the earth when one recognises that their hour is so brief.

There will always be optimists in the countries where "the standards
of living are high." There will always be writers--scientific or
otherwise--to dispose of materialism. But meanwhile it is well that
there should be at least one great modern among us for whom that
_pulvis et umbra_ is the last word. At least, one, if only for the sake
of those whom we mourn most; so that, beholding their lives, like
torch-flames against black darkness, we shall not stint them of their
remembrance.

ANATOLE FRANCE

Anatole France is probably the most disillusioned human
intelligence which has ever appeared on the surface of this planet.

All the great civilised races tend to disillusion. Disillusion is the
mark of civilised eras as opposed to barbaric ones and if the dream
of the poets is ever realised and the Golden Age returns, such an age
will be the supreme age of happy, triumphant disillusion.

This was seen long ago by Lucretius, who regarded the fear of the
gods as the last illusion of the human race, and looked for its
removal as the race's entrance into the earthly paradise.

Nietzsche's noble and austere call to seriousness and spiritual
conflict is the sign of a temper quite opposite from this. Zarathustra
frees himself from all other illusions, but he does not free himself
from the most deadly one of all--the illusion namely, that the freeing
oneself from illusion is a high and terrible duty.

The real disillusioned spirit is not the fierce Nietzschean one whose
glacial laughter is an iconoclastic battle-cry and whose freedom is a
freedom achieved anew every day by a strenuous and desperate
struggle. The real disillusioned spirit plays with illusions, puts them
on and takes them off, lightly, gaily, indifferently, just as it happens,
just as the moment demands.

One feels that in spite of his cosmic persiflage and radiant attempt to
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