CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES II. CONTRASTS III. MAETERLINCK ON HAMLET IV. AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY V. IMPRESSIONS OF GEORGE SAND MOTTO. "The first philosophers, whether Chaldeans or Egyptians, said there must be something within us which produces our thought. That something must be very subtle: it is breath; it is fire, it is ether; it is a quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intelechia; it is a number; it is harmony; lastly, according to the divine Plato, it is a compound of the _same_ and the _other_! It is atoms which think in us, said Epicurus after Democritus. But, my friend, how does an atom think? Acknowledge that thou knowest nothing of the matter." --VOLTAIRE. I. OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES. Self-Analysis, apart from its scientific uses, has seldom rewarded those who have practised it. To probe into the inner world of motive and desire has proved of small benefit to any one, whether hermit, monk or nun, indeed it has been altogether mischievous in result, unless the mind that probed, was especially healthy. Bitter has been the dissatisfaction, both with the process, and with what came of it, for being miserably superficial it could lead to no real knowledge of self, but simply centred self on self, producing instead of self-knowledge, self-consciousness, and often the beginnings of mental