not irreconcilable, since the desire immanent in the world may be founded upon some reality superior to the desire itself,-a reality of which man can evidently form only an inadequate and more or less anthropomorphic conception.

What is certain is that a harmonization of the real and the ideal is possible, within the world itself, by means of a conception of reality which finds, beneath movement, appetition, and in appetition, the more or less conscious idea. It is necessary, then, if we are not mistaken, to introduce everywhere the immanent mean term of idea-force, which gives room for all speculations regarding the transcendent. Such an idealism excludes nothing save systematic negations, it is open on all sides, it grows by all that is added to it, it would be broad enough to reject nothing; an imperfect attempt at synthesis, it aspires to become a synthesis always more comprehensive and more complete.

Philosophers! let us never cease to make war upon war, to exclude exclusions, to deny mere negations, to remind ourselves how restricted are individual minds, how much the "monads" need to have "windows on the outside," or rather to be on all sides open to the sunlight of intelligence. All sincere thought has something in it for the philosopher to learn and to remember; individual dogmatism is the arrogance of thought; dilettantism is the indifference of it; the spirit of conciliation is, in our view, the spirit of fraternity and of liberty.

MAETERLINCK'S ESSAY ON THE LIFE OF BEES'

EDOUARD ROD, Paris.

At the outset I must warn the readers of this magazine that I cannot speak impartially of Mr. Maurice Maeterlinck, as critics are recommended to do, because he is of all contemporary writers the one whom I most enjoy reading, and because I am most grateful to him. I fell in love with his first works, to which attention was directed, immediately on their appearance, by an enthusiastic article of Octave Mirbeau. I loved him at once, and I have gone on loving him from volume to volume. As a poet, he delights me by the deep grace and the eternal meaning of his creations; as a moralist, he abounds in truths on the soul and life that strike me as new, and that I listen to with profound reverence. Present day literature has produced a large number of writers of talent, whose qualities and powers are extremely varied, but not one of them is more "human" (every one knows the meaning of this vast and magnificent expression, which ennobles the literary works to which it is applied); not one better deserves the epithet "modern," so often grossly misused, for no one has better succeeded in adapting his art to the conditions of present day life, by creating moulds and forms for himself.

I have never met Mr. Maeterlinck; I know only by hearsay that he is not afflicted with neurasthenia or neuropathy, that he is not even a spinner of niceties after the manner of "des Esseintes," but a tall, robust, healthy individual, fond of every

(1) Translated by Professor F. C. de Sumichrast of Harvard University. Copyright, 1902, by Frederick A. Richardson.

form of sport, with no perverse tastes, no "gamy" ideas, and who seeks sensations only where these may be found by every one. He recently published, in "The Figaro," an article on automobiles, and it may be that it impressed rather unfavorably some of his female admirers, whose worship is always tinged with a certain proportion of snobbishness and preciosity: it is because they praise without understanding. Our author, who accepts the latest comforts without sacrificing aught of the poetry of which he is full, is busy giving the lie to Alfred de Vigny's sad and splendid prophecy,-repeated so often by others since he uttered it. I refer, of course, to the memorable description of the world, transformed by scientists, by steam, and by machinery, which is to be found in "The Shepherd's Home":

"Jamais la rêverie amoureuse et paisible

N'y verra sans horreur son pied blanc attaché,
Car il faut que ses yeux, sur chaque objet visible,
Versent un long regard comme un fleuve épanché,
Qu'elle interroge tout avec inquiétude,

Et, des secrets divins se faisant une étude,
Marche, s'arrête et marche avec le col penché.'

I

It seems as though Mr. Maeterlinck had undertaken to prove, by his own example, that the poet was mistaken, and that poetry is to be found in all things, or, at least, that when it dwells in a man's heart or mind, he can cause it to spring from everything. In spite of the feverish activity that surrounds him, and which he does not affect to ignore, in spite of the hundred fold greater rapidity of our means of transportation, of the noise of iron works, the smoke of blast furnaces, and the cries of anguish of the troubled nations, he "interrogates everything restlessly," though there is nothing troublous or sickly in his unrest.

His

(1) Never shall reverie, amorous and tranquil, see her white foot fixed to it without a feeling of repulsion; for her eyes must cast, upon each object visible, a long glance like to an outpoured stream; she must restlessly question each thing, and studying deep her divine secrets, with bended neck walk on, stop, and again proceed."

steadfast glance sees through appearances, and penetrates into the very soul where he collects the "divine secrets." And in order to make these manifest, he has made for himself a language which is subtile without being obscure, personal without being affected, novel without being the fruit of vain refinement. He thus belongs to no school, to no set, to no group. He stands in "splendid isolation." I do not think he has any imitators even; no one, so far as I am aware, has attempted to rewrite "The Princess Maleine" or "Pelléas and Mélisande," or to moralize as he has done in "The Treasury of the Humble," while I am convinced that no one will attempt to produce "The Life of Bees" under another form.

When "The Flowers of Evil" appeared, Victor Hugo told Baudelaire that he had invented a "new shiver." When one reads Mr. Maeterlinck's dramas, that is the expression one instinctively thinks of in connection with them, so new is the emotion they excite. Then, when one examines his other works, it becomes plain that "shiver" is too sensual and too fugitive a word to suit them. For, indeed, Mr. Maeterlinck is not satisfied with making a fleeting, superficial impression upon us; he creates an abundance of sentiments, sensations, and ideas, not by inventing them, doubtless, for in that line nothing is ever invented, but by expressing them, by revealing them in speech. And his last work, which treats of bees, a subject already discussed by many before him, is fully as personal and novel as are his former books. To begin with, he introduces an almost new method of observing animals.

In all ages this kind of observation has furnished poets and moralists often with the happiest themes. It is enough to recall the great satirical epic that expresses all the irony and all the suffering of the Middle Ages, as if it were intended to form a sarcastic companion picture to the poems of chivalry, to say nothing of the "Animals painted by themselves,”—the fables of Æsop, La Fontaine, Lessing, Florian, Gellert, and so many more. Taine, in his first work, endeavored to analyze and define the

nature of the pleasure we derive from these excursions of poets into the animal world :

"The main charm of fables is that the characters are animals. We gladly put aside for a moment our serious business and our unhappy passions, for they touch us still too closely when poetry represents them to us in men. The reaction of the emotions they awaken is so violent that it hurts us. We are less touched when it is animals that are involved, because they are less like ourselves and their feelings are more infantile. The mind runs lightly through the whole fable without becoming so deeply interested as to suffer; pity, joy, anger, every passion touches it, but none penetrates it; the mind glides over numbers of fugitive, half-formed emotions that gently lead it to a facile and delicate enjoyment."

All this is well observed, though perhaps marked by a tendency to arbitrary generalization that imparts to it a somewhat too dogmatic character. I fancy that in reality the literary observation of animals, as I shall call it, has a simpler and more spontaneous origin. It springs, like all poetry, not from calculation and reflection, but from instinct and the unconscious. It is wholly different from the proposed research of the scientist, of the "naturalist." It is simply a gift which the Eternal Mystery has bestowed upon some and withheld from others. Descartes, whose influence ruled French thinkers in the days of La Fontaine, would have been utterly unable to observe in that way, for, as Taine has not failed to remind us, that great devotee of the abstract persistently looked upon animals as mere machines. Many nowadays consider them to be nothing more than animals, -tease, hunt, fish, exploit,and eat them, without caring whether they think, feel, or suffer. But does any one suppose that any fabulist ever reasoned in the way indicated by Taine? Does any one imagine that a single one of these ingenious or profound observers of the ways of animals and of the corresponding faults of mankind ever said to himself: "I shall try to entertain men, who do not care to delve deep, by presenting to them a sketchy and, as it were, attenuated image of what they are, by incarnating their passions, their feelings, their vices, and their oddities in animals great and small, which shall thus become men, since they