and the unanimity of the wise. It is manifest that the second is the parent of the third." My part may perhaps be to introduce disagreement in order that a future unanimity can be reached. Even mistaken opinions earnestly expressed will help to elucidate truth and should be welcome.
I have referred to suffering as a good, as at any rate being of a quickening nature, an argument that I have largely used in one of my essays. Recently I have read Hinton's Mystery of Pain, which is devoted to an exposition of the same view in a most remarkable and profound, yet simple fashion; and one member of your D.M.I. Society having questioned me on the subject, I vv^ould recommend it to him and to the other two or three — not more — who are possibly interested in such speculations. Other much more practical and more useful books I have already recommended to you, and can do so again at another time.
You will find added to the collection an article on "Aestheticism," written for a school magazine; for, therefore, a class of readers differing in age and education widely from your own. But I have included it here, although containing more or less a repetition of argument, because it may prove attractive to some of the hundred designers in either factory. The other additions speak for themselves.
Finally, let me plainly say that I have addressed you wholly as a private individual—an art student if you will—not now in any connection whatever with the factories or their management. I gladly agreed on your own request to speak simply as a friend, and having spoken freely I trust there may also have been some words you will not entirely forget or find wholly valueless.
Paris, October 22, 1886.
