to a partial, if not an absolute,
tendency to pessimism? That a natural-mystic should be a pessimist
would seem to be an anomaly. For he holds that he can hold
living communion with the Real; and such communion would
carry with it, surely, a strong hope, if not a conviction, that
change in material form cannot affect the inner being, call it the
spiritual essence, of which that form is a particular
manifestation. Deny that nature has a soul and optimism
becomes a ghastly mockery. Believe that nature and man are
linked together as kindred forms of spiritual existence, and then,
though there will not indeed be formal proof of immortality,
there will be intuitive trust in the future. What the implications
of such a trust may be is for the various philosophies and
theologies to determine; but taken at its lowest value, it would
secure a man from pessimism.

In the light of these general observations, let us consider the
particular case now presented. The river is merged in the sea--it
is absorbed--its existence as a river is terminated. But the
"substance" of its being remains; diffused in a vaster whole, but
not lost. What is this vaster whole? If we regard it as an
Absolute, there may perchance be ground for pessimism. If,
with certain scientists, we stop short at the conservation of
energy, there is nothing ahead but a blank. But if we hold to the
conservation of values, as at least a parallel to this conservation
of energy, we are impelled to hold also to the conservation of all
that is ultimate in individualities. For values imply modes of
being which can allow of the experience of values as such. And
the Nature-Mystic's direct communion with his environment is
seen to be one mode by which the individual centre of life
learns to live increasingly in the life of the Whole--the total
Reality. There is, then, no absorption where values are
conserved, but an ever richer content of experience, an ever
deepening insight into its significance, and an ever keener
enjoyment of the material it affords.

As a specific case of an optimistic creed based on an intuition of
the essential kinship of all things, it is profitable to study the
poetry of a Sufi mystic of the thirteenth century. How delicate
the thought enshrined in the following lines:

"When man passed from the plant to the animal state,
He had no remembrance of his state as a plant,
Except the inclination he felt for the world of plants,
Especial