IN PAIRING TIME 155 



pipes of Pan must suffer the clatter of his hoofs. 

 For, in the last resort, in all things natural there 

 would seem to be some strange inconsequence, 

 some reason that is unreason to our thoughts 

 songs of anger, moans for joy, beauty that grins 

 and loves that hate, life that dies and death that 

 lives. Or, it may be, these seeming inversions are 

 but the figments of sophisticated minds, which, 

 having travelled far from the first strong simplicity 

 of Nature, turn back to impose upon it their own 

 misty modes of thought. She brings to life, she 

 brings to death, with the grand indifference of one 

 to whom both are but parts of some simpler, 

 indestructible Whole ; some One Last Thing, in 

 which is Life, going out from it and returning to 

 it again. To none not even to those who medicine 

 body and soul of man, is it given to face so closely 

 this " spirit of negation " as to him who lives the 

 life of the open. On every hand is contradiction 

 until, cutting down through the shows of things, he 

 refunds mentality and morality alike into that which, 

 being before either, contained and conditioned 

 both Life, the First, the Unmodified. 



I shall not soon forget the occasion when a certain 

 face of Bouguereau's first caught my eye. It was in 

 the " Naissance de Venus." The goddess, born of 

 the foam, stands on her shell, sea-borne. About 

 her swart mermen and fair-skinned mermaids with 

 human smiles disport themselves, whilst little children, 

 mounted on dolphins, guide them through the waves 

 with silken reins. The softening influence of the 

 goddess is upon them all ; they are humanised ; we 

 recognise ourselves in them. But, on the right of 



