LETTERS FROM ABROAD
uneconomical, and therefore not only harmful but ungainly. True economy is the principle of beauty in practical arithmetic. Driven to bewilderment, life began to seek for a pause in her insanity of endless multiplication. All forms of ambitious power are obsessed by this delirium of multiplication. All its steps are steps towards augmentation and not completeness. But ambitions, that rely solely upon the suggestion of their tails and armour, are condemned to carry out their own obstruction till they have to stop.
In its early history, life, after its orgies of megalomania, had at last to think of disarmament. But how did she effect it ? By boldly relinquishing the ambition to produce bigness—and man was born helplessly naked and small, All of a sudden, he was disinherited of the enormity of flesh, when apparently he was most in need of it. But this prodigious loss gained for him his freedom and victory.
Then began the reign of Mind. it brought its predecessor of gigantic bulk under subjection. But as often happens. the master became the parasite of the slave, and mind also tried to achieve greatness by the bigness of materials. The dynasty of mind followed the dynasty of flesh, but employed this flesh as its Prime Minister.
Our history is waiting for the dynasty of Spirit. The human succeeded the brutal; and now comes the turn of the Divine. In our mythology, we have
