the dim funereal ivy, there is the brightness and glow of the purple
convolvulus, there is the wild-rose clustering round the windows. They
are lying asleep on the doorsteps, they gather themselves into
knots as if to gossip and to talk in the language of flowers by the
doorways--utterly beautiful! You look at the city with wonder and
astonishment--with desire. How wonderful, you say, that church tower
covered with its flowers; that altar covered with flowers not gathered
and placed in vases, but with Nature's own hand arranging an offering
to the living God. These streets that sound no footfall of an angry
multitude, but that listen to the footfall of a quiet nature--yes,
it is beautiful in the early morning. But stay there until the later
afternoon, when the fog begins to gather; stay there until night-time,
when the miasma begins to rise; stay there until morning, and you
are in danger of destruction from poison. It is a land of flowery
expression; but it is not a land of real life.

My friends, the activity of man, the poetic faculty of man, all the
gifts and all the capacities of man--they are beautiful, they are
touching, they are attractive; but if they are all, if they express
all that you have to offer, and all that is in you to feel, then they
are hollow, or they-are poisonous, and like that city of flowers. Why?
Because there is in you and me a soul that lies behind our thought,
altho there is more than feeling there--a soul that supports our will,
and is more than our volition. It thinks, but is not thought; it
feels, but is not feeling; it wills, but is not volition. There
is something deeper in man than his esthetic desire or his active
practise, something deeper beneath us all than anything that finds
expression, certainly than anything that finds satisfaction. There is
the self; there is myself, yourself; there is that strange, mysterious
life of loneliness which stands, and thinks, and judges, and