the persistent attempt to force our own ideas of good fortune down our neighbour's throat. The pathos of life comes in large part from his too amiable compliance, his vain attempt to follow a light which he does not see. If we ourselves have found the light, or believe that we have, let us by all means try to reveal it to our brother." But it is no part of our duty to blind him by our light. We can never really help people by making decisions for them. We can only put all the pros and cons before them and allow them to choose for themselves. Anything else is harmful in the extreme. Trying to make worms stand on their tails may have its points, as a pastime; as an occupation, it has its drawbacks, even to the worms. Our difficulties are further increased by the complexity and artificiality of our circumstances in life. In many things the human species has become very conventional. If we trace the origin and progress of music, painting, poetry, morality, we see ample evidence of the fact. Now and again there comes a revolt against convention. Every great moral teacher and reformer has been a breaker of the formerly accepted laws. So also in other departments, in literature, art, and music. Poetry was thought to be inseparably connected with and dependent upon rhyme and rhythm. Walt Whitman went back to the original and fundamental modes of expression and threw his "stuff" at one anyhow. Millet, the French painter, took artists and the public back to an immediate and direct revelation of nature. Wagner cast forth his melodies and harmonies in such a fashion as to make it difficult if not impossible to say in what key his music was written. Now, amidst all claims, disputes, wranglings, anomalies, injustices, is it possible after a similar fashion to revert to first principles, to return
