By H. de Vere Stacpoole London: John Lane, The Bodley Head. New York: John Lane Company Toronto: Bell & Cockburn MCMXIV COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY JOHN LANE COMPANY PUBLISHERS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK, U. S. A. The New Optimism...

I WAS standing by the sea-wall, watching the green water foaming round the stakes of the breakwater, when my companion, a charming and elegant woman, turned to me: “What is there in water that fascinates one?” she asked. “Do you feel the fascination?” “Yes.” “Do you not know why you feel it?” “No.” “Shall I tell you?” “Because you were once a swimming reptile.” “Thank you.” “Oh, there is nothing to thank me for, though the fact is the most glorious in the universe.” “The fact that I was once a r

“ I CANNOT deny the truth of what you have told me,” she said. “I can see clearly the different steps up which the world has come, but does it not seem that this new universal mind which is the latest great stage in the advance of the world has, according to you, been produced by purely material causes? It is as much as to say that the printing-press, the telegraph, and the steam-engine have created Good—that they, surely, never could do?” “They have not; they have only circulated thought; they

“ A ND what about woman’s relationship to the world?” “There is no such thing as woman.” “Oh! Oh!” “There are only women. To talk of Woman as a being apart from man is absurd. When I used the word Man in talking of the universal mind, I included women. The word Man as used to represent men is a falsity in that it excludes women. The word Woman is absurd, however you take it. “Men and women are cut out of the same piece of stuff—Human Nature. The woman is cut a bit smaller, and her outline is a b

In my experience, judging from the men I have met in life and the men whose lives I have read about, the really strong men of the world have been men of strong belief—and mostly men with a strong belief in a personal God. Faith is a very wonderful thing, call it what you please. There is in Faith an enormous dynamic energy the origin of which, analyse it as much as I will, leaves me utterly baffled and bewildered. One might say that it is an orientation of the mind, a pointing of all the thought

I HAVE said very little about Anarchism—merely mentioned it by name; yet the inquiries I have made into this subject reveal an organisation and a literature astonishing to the everyday mind. To use the words of that ardent bibliophile, H. Bourdin: “To most people the word Anarchy is evil-sounding, but it is not the same to learned men and to collectors and lovers who acquire the desire of accumulating documents for history’s sake. “The Anarchist literature has not a determined origin, being not

U NDER the title of Design in the Living Organism , the famous embryologist, Carl Ernst Baer, published a work in 1876 which, together with the article on Darwinism which accompanied it, proved very acceptable to our opponents, and is still much quoted in opposition to evolution. It was a revival of the old teleological system under a new name, and we must devote a line of criticism to it. We must premise that, though Baer was a scientist of the highest order, his original monistic views were gr

M Y companion likened the present-day world to a big head with the brains on the outside. The idea is absolutely just; we have even the two hemispheres of the brain in the eastern and western world. In future years, when telegraphy and telephony are more highly developed—and, who knows, telepathy also—the idea will even be more true than it is to-day. In this connection: have you ever considered the deep mystery that lies in Analogy? In the universe of mind and matter, why do we see the same ide