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Introduction

admiration, hope, and love,' said Wordsworth. And we understand by them, M. Maeterlinck would add. I fear we are not all of us found worthy of the mystical frame of mind. But it is a psychological fact, like another; and if we can only examine it from the outside, we can at least bring patience and placidity to the task. The point is: has M. Maeterlinck anything to say? It will be found, I think, that he has.

All men, the world has long been assured, are born Aristotelians and Platonists. There cannot be a doubt about M. Maeterlinck's philosophic birthright. He may say, as Paul Verlaine sang:

Moi, j'allais rêvant du divin Platon,
Sous l'œil clignotant des bleus becs de gaz.

More strictly, he is a Neo-Platonist. His remark about the Admirable Ruysbroeck's idea is equally true of his own. 'I fancy that all those who have not lived in the intimacy of Plato and of the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria, will not go far with this reading.' He quotes Plotinus, 'the great Plotinus, who, of all the intellects known to me, draws the nearest to the divine.' He cites Porphyry and the Gnostics and Swedenborg.

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