place in the universe.  It is not well that he should for ever be pasting anxious glances about him, like the child that has strayed from its mother’s side.  Nor need we believe that these disillusions must necessarily give rise to moral discouragement; for the truth that seems discouraging does in reality only transform the courage of those strong enough to accept it; and, in any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods.  But indeed no truth can discourage, whereas much that passes as courage only bears the semblance thereof.  The thing that enfeebles the weak will but help to strengthen the strong.  “Do you remember the day,” wrote a woman to her lover, “when we sat together by the window that looked on to the sea, and watched the meek procession of white-sailed ships as they followed each other into harbour? . . .  Ah! how that day comes back to me! . . .  Do you remember that one ship had a sail that was nearly black, and that she was the last to come in?  And do you remember, too, that the hour of separation was upon us, and that the arrival of the last boat of all was to be our signal for departure?  We might perhaps have found cause for sadness in the gloomy sail that fluttered at her mast; but we who loved each other had ‘accepted’ life, and we only smiled as we once more recognised the kinship of our thoughts.”  Yes, it is thus we should act; and though we cannot always smile as the black sail heaves in sight, yet is it possible for us to find in our life something that shall absorb us to the exclusion of sadness, as her love absorbed the woman whose words I have quoted.  Complaints of injustice grow less frequent as the brain and the heart expand.  It is well to remind ourselves that in this world, whose fruit we are, all that concerns us must necessarily be more conformable with our existence than the most beneficent law of our imagination.  The time has arrived perhaps when man must learn to place the centre of his joys and pride elsewhere than within himself.  As this idea takes firmer root within us, so do we become more conscious of our helplessness beneath its overwhelming force; yet is it at the same time borne home to us that of this force we ourselves form part; and even as we writhe beneath it, we are compelled to admire, as the youthful Telemachus admired the power of his father’s arm.  Our own instinctive actions awaken within us an eager curiosity, an affectionate, pleased surprise:  why should we not train ourselves thus to regard the instinctive actions of nature?  We love to throw the dim light of our reason on to our unconsciousness:  why not let it play on what we term the unconsciousness of the universe?  We are no less deeply concerned with the one than the other.  “After he has become acquainted with the power that is in him,” said a philosopher, “one of the highest privileges of man is to realise his individual powerlessness.  Out of the very