The San Francisco call., 1904-07-03

from score of magazines, should be
called The Double Garden" is as dark
g mystery as the most erudite Brown
ing interpreter could crave. Perhaps
the craze that has overtaken the Eng
lish magazine world for naming publ
cations by cabalistic signs, such as IT
p. IS, has moved Maeterlinck to chris
ten his last volume with a name whose
significance is known only to himself.
However that may be, and whether
this is q Double Garden" or a Single
Grass Plot" the sixteen essays, some
speculative. some quantity scientific.
are delightful reading.
The one richest in thought and
filed with the highest optimism for
US of the present moment is that en-
titled The Leaf of Olive" 1t is T. hing
less than the spiritual welfare of the
human race which Maeterlinck under
takes to instruct in the present essay.
What is the result for us of the human
family that in this enlightened age we
are enabled to read the world through
the eyes of science rather than through
the clouded glasses of philosophic and
religious speculation? If we have left
behind US a cycle of intense religious
enthusiasm and are advancing into an
age OF coldly critical, skeptically inves-
tigating Inaterialism, is there taken
from us all morality, all spirituality?
Are we become souless mites resi-
dent in space incommensurable? No,
says Maeterlinck. We who cling not so
teraciously to the spiritual have to
support us now the constant presence
of the real, made manifest, made tam
gible yearly by the strides of science.
The cults of philosophy, Of religion,
forced the mind in its conception of the
infinitude of time and space and the
mystery of the universe to feed upon
itself. to support itself entirely upon
its own breath. To-day the universe
itself is beginning to penetrate into the
conception which We form of it. .
Until now we had been pressing with
the aid of our inflrm logic on our idle
investigation on the subject of the rid
die; to-day issuing from our too inward
abode, we are trying to enter into re-
lations with the riddle itself"
From this the author makes the
deduction that, living in a universe
daily becoming more tangible, and con-
sequently more broad, our morality
must of surety broaden with the
horizon. "If our happiness" says he,
depends upon our conception Of the
universe. that Is. in a great measure,
because our morality depends upon It.
And our morality depends much less
upon the nature than upon the size of
the conception. We should be better,
nobler, more moral in the midst of
universe proved to be without morality,
but conceived on an infinite scale, than
in universe which attained the per-
lection OF the human ideal, but which
appeared to us circumscribed and de-
void of mystery"
Quite of the same spirit Of daring op-
timism is the authors essay on Sin
CERTIFY" wherein he takes the very
broad ground that are we but sincere
with ourselves in recognizing In our
own vices, faults and passions things
that constitute our primitive vital force
and are instructive in us. we may take
the high vantage ground OF an interest
ed spectator of the workings of these
very human failings. This faculty Of
observation must in itself come only
after we have attained q force Of in
tellect sufficiently powerful; with the
possession of that rarefled degree of in
telligence we can control these vagrant
creatures OF our lower nature at will.
A rather fanciful conception is this Of
Maeterlinck's and one not calculated
to receive ready reception at the hands
OF our moralists.
In lighter vein Maeterlinck returns