n of hearts is not an historian of emotions, yet he penetrates
further, restrained as he may be, since his aim is to reach the very
fount of laughter and tears. The sight of human affairs deserves
admiration and pity. They are worthy of respect too. And he is not
insensible who pays them the undemonstrative tribute of a sigh which is
not a sob, and of a smile which is not a grin. Resignation, not mystic,
not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious and informed by love,
is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a
sham.

Not that I think resignation the last word of wisdom. I am too much the
creature of my time for that. But I think that the proper wisdom is to
will what the gods will without perhaps being certain what their will
is--or even if they have a will of their own. And in this matter of life
and art it is not the Why that matters so much to our happiness as the
How. As the Frenchman said, "Il y a toujours la maniere." Very true.
Yes. There is the manner. The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in
indignations and enthusiasms, in judgments--and even in love. The manner
in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner
truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind.

Those who read me know my conviction that the world, the temporal world,
rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they must be as old as
the hills. It rests notably, amongst others, on the idea of Fidelity. At
a time when nothing which is not revolutionary in some way or other can
expect to attract much attention I have not been revolutionary in my
writings. The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that
it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard, absolute
optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and
intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things;
but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All claim to
special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger from which a
philosophical mind should be free. . .

I fear that trying to be conversational I have only managed to be unduly
discursive. I have never been very well acquainted with the art of
conversation--that art which, I understand, is supposed to be lost now.
My young days, the days when one's habits and character are formed, have
been rather familiar with long silences. Such voices as broke into them
were anything but conversatio