Had the Testator done otherwise; had he directed that the idealist was to be judged by his ideals; he would have done what he has been ignorantly accused of doing; he would have founded a new Catholic Church. As it is, he has founded a Forum. By giving the prize to eloquence and not to truth, he has done what is best for the idealist, and best for mankind, and in the long run best for truth. He has secured the freedom of thought by the bondage of expression. This golden fetter is placed on the right foot.

At the same time he has given back to literature by the word "marklig” all that is taken from it by the words "idealist tendency". I cannot render it by the English word "distinguished", because that has now become cant. By a distinguished man, we mean a man who has distinguished himself in a frock coat and tall hat and kid gloves; by a distinguished writer one who has daintily picked his words out of a dictionary of synonyms, and made a delicate mosaic, rather than one in whose mind strong emotion has melted the element of language and cast down the diamond of literature.

What the Testator has asked for is the most glorious work.

VIII

Nobel was not a man of letters. The great subtlety with which this Will is drawn is not that of the

grammarian or the lawyer, but that of a sincere mind thoroughly possessed of its purpose, and wresting words to that purpose. Has he not given this very legacy to the idealist who shall contribute most materially to benefit mankind?

The words of such a Testator must be approached in the spirit in which lawyers pretend to approach all testaments. The object must be not to explain the words by themselves, but to gather from them what the Testator wished to be done.

It is in that spirit that I have tried to shape the following inquiry. The question I have asked myself is, not what is the meaning of the word Idealist, or Idealistic; but, what did the Testator mean by it? How I was tempted to undertake the task is here beside the question. I need only say that I began it just after the official publication of the Will, in the year 1901, and when it was the subject of discussion as a matter of public interest. It is as a member of the public, of that great Public designated by the Testator, under the name of mankind, as his ultimate heirs, that I am interested in this Will, and that, no one else coming forward, I have been bold to vindicate it.

The six years that have elapsed since that time have not materially changed the situation. Striking works of an idealist tendency are not being written at the rate of one every year, or, if they are, they have not been brought to the notice of the Trustees of this bequest. In the dearth of such works the Trustees have done doubtless what the Testator might have consented to, if not what he has directed, in awarding this Prize as a testimonial to distinguished men of

letters at the close of their careers. In any case their discretion is absolute. But inasmuch as they have framed no authoritative interpretation of the governing word in the bequest, they seem to be in the position of a Court which has not yet delivered judgment, and therefore may be addressed without impertinence by any counsel interested in the case.

I lay these imperfect suggestions before the public in the hope that they may be found of some interest, apart from their exciting cause; and in the further hope that, if they do not increase, at any rate they cannot lessen, the public gratitude for a high and unique example of benevolence.

For addressing them more directly to the illustrious body charged with the execution of the Trust I have no real excuse except that there would have been a certain affectation in doing otherwise. The Swedish Academy stands too far above me to need to notice anything I may say, unless it be moved to do so. I can only come before it, like Esther before the Persian king, and abide its sovereign pleasure.

I make no claim to speak as an idealist. I am a scientist, and my science is ontology, commonly called truth:-now this bequest is not in favour of works of a true tendency, nor even of the truest works of an idealist tendency. Nevertheless I think, perhaps, that Nobel might have pardoned what I do, and let me lay this little essay in interpretation as a wreath upon his tomb.

SECOND HEAD

THE PERSONAL EQUATION

Descartes and the Sorbonne. 1. Useless Literature.2. A Personal Explanation. 3. The Blockade of the Schoolmasters. - 4. Scientific Philology. - 5. Truth and Verihood. 6. The White Mind.

As the astronomer, in order to tell fairly the time. kept by a star in heaven, must first record the time taken by his own thought, and thereby correct his reckoning; and as Descartes did not deem it beside the purpose to tell the Sorbonne that he was in his dressing-gown when he sat down to prove the existence of God; so it will not be vain for me to describe with what bias I approached my present task.

I

An eloquent writer upon Art, in a work called The Seven Lamps of Architecture, has chosen Truth to be his second Lamp, and thereby shown that it was not his first wish to tell the truth about archi

tecture. Accordingly it is no surprise to see him begin by defining architecture as useless building, and end, in a preface written long afterwards, by complaining that this very book had proved useless for its purpose. For if architecture be useless building. literature must be useless writing. It is significant, and it will not be found beside the question, that neither in this book, nor in other books treating of Gothic architecture, is there the least allusion to the architecture of the Goths. The origin of the Gothic church, like the origin of everything else in Europe, has been sought on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. No one has asked why the Italian masons, when they crossed the Alps, as they are still crossing them to-day, in search of work, left off building like the Romans, and began building otherwise. No one seems to know that the Gothic church, in its essential features, features that have been copied in St. Peters, is a copy of the Gothic hall as it was built in Iceland in the days of Charlemagne, and as it was built in Gothland in the days of Herod.

To say that truth had been my first lamp in this inquiry would be only to say that I was a Gothic writer, or, as men write it in my native land, a Jute. I have approached the word Idealist in the spirit of a Goth seeking to understand a Mediterranean word. I have approached it in the spirit of a child seeking to understand a schoolmaster's word. I have been like a sleeper, waking out of an enchanted sleep, and seeking to understand an enchanter's word.

My first, and, to the best of my endeavour, my only light in this inquiry has been the light of verihood.