refuge, we who have to win our liberty every
day anew by bathing in these classic streams, we too will do well to
remember that the most precious things in life are the things that the
world can neither give nor take away.

We too--encouraged by these great individualists--have a right to
fall back upon whatever individuality may have been left to us; and,
resting upon that, sinking into the soul of that, to defy all that public
opinion and the voice of the majority may be able to do.

And we shall be wise also if we recognise, before it is too late, that
what is most intrinsic and inalienable in ourselves is just that very
portion of us which has nothing to do with our work in life, nothing
to do with our duty to the community.

We shall be wise if we recognise, before it is too late, that the thing
most sacred in us is that strange margin of unoccupied receptivity,
upon which settle, in their flight over land and sea, the beautiful
wild birds of unsolicited dreams.

We shall be wise if, before we die, we learn a little of the art of
suspending our judgment--the art of "waiting upon the spirit."

For it is only when we have suspended our judgment; it is only when
we have suspended our convictions, our principles, our ideals, our
moralities, that "the still small voice" of the music of the universe,
sad and sweet and terrible and tender, drifts in upon us, over the face
of the waters of the soul.

The essence of us, the hidden reality of us, is too rare and delicate a
thing to bear the crude weight of these sturdy opinions, these
vigorous convictions, these social ardours, without growing dulled
and hardened.

We all have to bear the burden of humanity; and the artists among us
may be thankful that the predatory curse resting upon the rich is
very seldom ours: but the burden of humanity must not be allowed
to press all joy, all originality, all waywardness, all interest, all
imagination out of our lives.

It is not for long, at best or worst, that we know what it is to be
conscious of being living children of the human race upon this
strange planet.

The days pass quickly, and the seasons and the years. From the
graves of the darlings of our souls there comes a voice and a cry. A
voice bidding us sink into our own true selves before we too are
numbered with the dead; a cry bidding us sacrifice everything before
we sacrifice the prerogative of our inmost identity, the right to feel
and think and dream as pers