was
a matter of much higher difficulty that I, a thinking being, should
arise from nothing, than it would be for me to acquire the knowledge of
many things of which I am ignorant, and which are merely the accidents
of a thinking substance; and certainly, if I possessed of myself the
greater perfection of which I have now spoken,--in other words, if I
were the author of my own existence,--I would not at least have denied
to myself things that may be more easily obtained, as that infinite
variety of knowledge of which I am at present destitute. I could not
indeed have denied to myself any property which I perceive is contained
in the idea of God, because there is none of these that seems to be more
difficult to make or acquire; and if there were any that should happen
to be more difficult to acquire, they would certainly appear so to me
(supposing that I myself were the source of the other things I possess),
because I should discover in them a limit to my power.

PAUL DESJARDINS

(------)

BY GRACE KING

What a man stands for, in the life and literature of his day, is easily
enough estimated when his name passes current in his language for a
hitherto undesignated shade of meaning. One of the most acute and
sensitive of contemporary French critics, M. Jules Lemaitre, in an
article on an evolutionary phase in modern literature, expresses its
significant characteristic to be--"L'ideal de vie interieure, la morale
absolue,--si je puis m'exprimer ainsi, le Desjardinisme" (The ideal of
spiritual life, absolute morality,--if I may so express myself,
Desjardinism). The term, quickly appropriated by another French critic,
and one of the remarkable women of letters of her day,--the late Baronne
Blaze de Bury,--is literally interpreted as "summing up whatever is
highest and purest and of most rare attainment in the idealism of the
present hour." And she further, with the intuition of her sex, feeling a
pertinent question before it is put, singles out the vital germ of
difference which distinguishes this young writer as typical of the
idealism of the hour, and makes him its name-giver:--"What is in other
men the indirect and hidden source of their public acts, is in Paul
Desjardins the direct source of life itself--the life to be lived; and
also of the mode in which that life is to be conceived and to be made
apparent to the world." Of the life, "sincerity is its prime virtue.
Each leader proves his faith by his individu