ness? So, indeed, we have it variously exampled,

from the rugged dutifulness which is often also resignation, through the several commercial, scientific, and artistic "consecrations," up to those deep personal devotions which are probably the commonest cases in this kind. And the certain test of such devotion is its unconditional self-surrender. This it is that utterly distinguishes all sham devotion — all service seeking its reward, all mouth enthusiasm and dilettantism, all gregarious good-nature and mere animal lust all, in a word, which asks to get, from that which asks only to give.

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And how through what visible activities does this spirit of devotion chiefly reveal itself? It may indeed do so through any into which the spirit can penetrate. Does not even the diversionist in his diversions often, involuntarily, illustrate this? The grateful gourmand to begin with baser sort may "devote 99 some part of his gorged strength.to eulogy of dinner, will probably reward its live accessories with lavish tipping; the "devoted" sportsman will attain disinterested heights in praise and in promotion of his pastime, and business, art, truth, virtue, and their sort have each its genuine and more or less joyous devotees. But the best devotion this world knows, the commonest and gladsomest, is that of one soul to another. Most of humankind are not held by devotion to a practice or a principle, cannot temporarily entertain it, and do not indeed at all at

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tempt it. Spirit asks the call of spirit to respond with fullest strength. Nay, have not our philosophic, moralistic, and artistic friends missed something in an abstract object of devotion, and endeavored to supply the lack of living personality with some makeshift personification each of his own pursuit? Hence these various proper-namings of "divine Philosophy," gracious Virtue," "glorious Art" in most cases, I imagine, with rather poor success. These, at any rate, speak only to the merest fraction of mankind; the immense majority of us must have a living object to awaken and receive our love. In such case only will however much devotion we may have to give come free and warm from our full hearts. And so in these loves for the living,— in the love of dog for man, of man for master, friend for friend, throughout the family bond, and in all further manifestations whether animal, human, or divine, we find the perfect types of pure devotion, the love that longs not in the least to get, but longs only to give.

3. CRITERIA

"And therewith gives away its freedom!" our shrewd diversionist exclaims with copious contempt; "throws away its birthright and the whole worth of its being!"

Well, that is tragic if the fact; but is it after all the fact? Let us weigh and judge the claims

of these two practices upon our optional activity. "Ah, yes," replies our playful friend, " we know the sound of that decoy. You want to snare us in the net of social service. But we aren't to be caught that way. We have not received devotion from society, we don't ask it, and we won't give any. Tie yourself up as you will, but leave us to pursue our paths of happiness.

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Your pardon, friend; I aim to help you in that same pursuit, or rather in accomplishment of the same end by better methods than pursuing. I do not plan to spend the glowing energy of your pursuit for satisfying social claims; I shall not once mention them. I shall at present judge these two, diversion and devotion, on no other ground than that of their intrinsic joyfulness. This is surely not a priggish or pedantic ground of judgment; and judgment on this ground is, all considered, easily possible. So let us be about it.

If it is by joy alone that life is to be justified, where shall that joy itself be found and tested? Life, we know, is lived within; it is of the feelings, and must have its judgment here. So much feeling, so much life: that is the simple formula. There are many feelings, though? Yes, but all of them, each in its own degree, will, for present purposes at least, come within one or other of two kinds of feeling, of loving or of hating, its reverse. The degrees range from our little likes and dislikes to our soul-compelling passions, but throughout their range are somewhere within these kinds.

Now one of these need not detain our notice; the good hater, though very much alive, is not generally thought of as a highly joyful creature, and not many people practice hating with much satisfaction to themselves. Love, then, is the element in which joy grows; and life to each possessor has the present value only of its various loves.

So much love, then, so much life. But life, or love, has its levels, has its height no less than its expanse; and the fondest feedings of our gluttonous congregation, the most delighted gapings of our spectatorial multitudes, are rightly judged — and on no priggish ground, but on the single basis of their own possession of pure joy to be on somewhat lower levels than are several other sorts of love. What are these more elevated? They are widely various, no doubt, but have at least one trait in common. The characteristic of them all, the seal and certification of all higher loves, is that they give themselves to the thing loved, to the beloved, that they burst forth in devotion.

And what diverted attitude of soul can stand Iwith this devoted? Look at the life diversion leads, or rather note the lack in much of it of any actual living. For life is a condition of inner activity, or feeling; and diversion for the most part represents a minimized inner activity, a passivity approaching torpor and spiritual death. It means to most the mere having of things happen to them which produce a tickled feeling: to the more enterprising remainder, an opportunity

to fling their limbs about or perhaps employ their upper faculties: but in all these cases with what degree of genuine delight? Well enough and doubtless needful we should have such soothing changes, revivifying vacations from intenser living; but here they are held up as life itself a sad revelation of the value of existence to some people. For life in its activities of larger value is necessarily a state of love; and the most active, even violent diversionist lives less intensely than the mildest devotee. The former sometimes spurts a plenteous stream of sparks, but from surface friction. chiefly; the latter glows within. That is the psychological gap between the two: pastime rarely penetrates the bosom's core and kindles us at heart, but leaves us cold with an increasing coldness which becomes disgust. Or if it does penetrate and kindle us, it thereby loses its own nature, diversion changing to devotion. Therein lies its greatest hope. Beginning possibly with promotion of mere pastime, with applause of a performer, or with trying to delight the palates or the pulses of one's friends, devotion enters the ascending path of life and joy, the scale of loves whose highest is a sort of ecstasy, a being carried out of self into a state beside which all diversion is but as the near approach of death. Love it is that looses us from the dominion of a deathly life and lifts us into the ecstatic spheres of its devotion.

But what diversionist untried in such devotion