The  passion  of  love  is  the  most  familiar  and  extreme
example  of  this  fact.  If  it  comes,  it  comes ;  if  it  does
not  come,  no  process  of  reasoning  can  force  it.  Yet  it
transforms  the  value  of  the  creature  loved  as  utterly  as
the  sunrise  transforms  Mont  Blanc  from  a  corpse-like
sray  to  a  rosy  enchantment ;  and  it  sets  the  whole  world
to  a  new  tune  for  «xe  lover  and  gives  a  new  issue  to  his
life.  So  with  fear,  with  indignation,  jealousy,  ambition,
worship.  If  they  are  there,  life  changes.  And  whether
they  shall  be  there  or  not  depends  almost  always  upon


THE   SICK  SOUL  151

non-logical,  often  on  organic  conditions.  And  as  the
excited  interest  which  these  passions  put  into  the  world
is  our  gift  to  the  world,  just  so  are  the  passions  them-
selves gifts  J  —  gifts  to  us,  from  sources  sometimes  low
and  sometimes  high ;  but  almost  always  non-logical  and
beyond  our  control.  How  can  the  moribund  old  man
reason  back  to  himself  the  romance,  the  mystery,  the
imminence  of  great  things  with  which  our  old  earth
tingled  for  him  in  the  days  when  he  was  young  and  well?
Gifts,  either  of  the  flesh  or  of  the  spirit ;  and  the  spirit
bloweth  where  it  listeth ;  and  the  world's  materials  lend
their  surface  passively  to  all  the  gifts  alike,  as  the  stage-
setting  receives  indifferently  whatever  alternating  colored
lights  may  be  shed  upon  it  fr3m  the  optical  apparatus  in
the  gallery.
Meanwhile  the  practically  real  world  for  each  one  of
us,  the  effective  world  of  the  individual,  is  the  compound
world,  the  physical  facts  and  emotional  values  in  indis-
tinguishable combination.  Withdraw  or  pervert  either
factor  of  this  complex  resultant,  and  the  kind  of  experi-
ence we  call  pathological  ensues.
