that you now inhabit.

If otherwise, why the consequence is obvious. The soul makes the body. It does it visibly here. High thoughts and noble impulses give light to the eye, music to the voice, life to the lips, grace to the form. A long series of such thoughts and impulses makes the soul stronger for its next effort; and the poet or sage who leaves this world (to write vaguely) after a great career will renew his youth, and reappear on this or some other scene, with a fairer form than ever, and with greater power to ascend towards the infinite summit of existence.

Where we shall pass the immeasurable future is no concern of ours; but it is our concern to know that our capacity for enjoying the future depends on our thoroughly enjoying the present. The word enjoy is the only one that will show what I mean. I use it to signify that absolute fulfilment of one's destiny which gives perfect pleasure.

It is quite possible-and to some minds easy —to enjoy life when you are doing disagreeable duties or mixing with disagreeable people. As to the locality of our future, why, the universe is very wide, and, if space be an immense cone, as would appear from the prevalence of ellipse and hyperbola in planetary and cometary motion, it must be long indeed before the best of us approach its apex. About such matters it is unwise to speculate. Indeed, when we have the most important truths that concern life in our possession, idle speculation about accidentals is infantile. We know what we are. Why should we guess as to where we are going? The soul Is, and it consciously possesses faculties infinitely improvable. Fears and fancies of the future will therefore be dismissed by all whose intellectual health is sound; they will enjoy the instant, knowing that this is the true way to secure enjoyment of the unknown and unguessable future.

Life, in our limited definition, is that part of our infinite existence which connects the spirit with its present material habiliment; that connexion we have in common with innumerable other creatures. Man's first requirement is to apprehend his isolation; to see himself as a living spirit, with incalculable capacities, and without any superior save the Divinity. His next is to feel the intimate connexion between himself and all other inhabitants of earth. He shares that subtle ether, life, with the grass under his feet and the tree against which he leans, with the birds and insects that traffic in the air, with animals innumerable, with the whole human race. Are the two positions reconcilable? They must be since they coincide; but their reconciliation is only a case of the eternal difficulty about fate and free will, which I leave to Milton's devils and to Calvinists like Mr. Froude. Metaphysics and metaphysical theology are

sterile studies; the brain that works upon
them is like a mill unsupplied with grain,
which goes on grinding its own wheels
together. What man has to understand is,
that he is his own master, responsible mainly
to himself for his own development.
that he lives in a world whose inhabitants
of all orders share with him the gift of life.
The former feeling gives him power; the
latter, love. These two, in combination,
produce happiness.

Wordsworth's faith

that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes,

yet

is perfectly true. The rose which your ladylove wears in her bosom has a share of the life which she and you possess. Whoever doubts this knows nothing of nature. Look from your window some March morning of east wind-Eurus, ab urendo-and you may tell the quarter whence it blows by the

tortured movement of the trees. They struggle with their aerial tormentor, and shudder as he smites them. Another day the sweet south is blowing; do you not see how the larch and lime palpitate with pleasure? .... do you not hear the musical psithurism of the feathered foliage?

When the wind blows from the east
'Tis good for neither man nor beast;
When the wind blows from the west
It rocks the young birds in their nest.

Not beasts and birds only, but every tree and flower and blade of grass feel the difference between these opponent winds-the demon and the seraph of the air-and show their feeling palpably. It was the consciousness hereof which made the Greeks, in old heroic days, give every tree its nymph. Such beautiful old stories as that of Rhaicos and the Hamadryad reveal to us that sensitiveness to the subtle life of the world which existed in simpler times among a poetic people. There