THE COSMIC COMEDY

OR

THE VITAL URGE

BY

LEONARD STUART

("H. C. ANGLICAN")

Author of "The Great God Pan," "The Eon," "The Suffragettes,"
"The Violinist," "Life's Ideal," etc. Editor "New Century
Reference Library of World Knowledge,"
"The People's Cyclopedia," etc.

When Time began, then,-deathless eons met,
To good eternal down the ages plighted.
What?-Though their lives may never be united

By mortal bonds; while eras rise and set,

Their pure minds blend in glance of eyes delighted;
Clean hearts! white souls! they greet-without regret.

To H. E. M.-Cor Maria-"The Eon."

PSYCHE COSMI

AD

LUCEM MUNDI

RB

ROSA SHARONI

L.J.S., ST.B., S.C.

A FRIEND IN DEED
IN TIME OF NEED

M.H., F.H.M., S.S., F.R.
A.L., G.E.R., F.F., G.Y.

TO THE ABOVE GOOD COMRADES OF DIFFERENT FAITHS, WHOSE HONEST CRITICISM, COMPANIONSHIP, ASSISTANCE AND INSPIRATION WROUGHT ITS CONSUMMATION,

WITH THE SINCERE HOPE THAT IT MAY HELP TO ACCOMPLISH

IN UNIVERSAL MEASURE THE UNITY OF THOUGHT AND

PURPOSE THAT WELDED OUR FRIENDSHIPS

New York, New Year, 1919

"This is such an odd and incomprehensible world What a complex riddle, a complexity of complexities!"

"All human progress is in a circle; or, to use a more accurate figure, in an ascending spiral curve. While we fancy ourselves going straight forward and attaining, at every step, an entirely new position of affairs, we do actually return to something long ago tried and abandoned, but which we now find etherealized, refined and perfected to its ideal. The past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy of the future.”

"At some brighter period, when the world shall have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth will be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground-of mutual happiness."

"I have always envied the Catholics their faith in that sweet sacred Virgin Mother, who stands between them and the Deity, intercepting somewhat of his awful splendor, but permitting his love to stream upon the worshiper more intelligibly to human comprehension through the medium of a woman's tenderness."

-Hawthorne.

"To see the best men move in sympathy and harmony with the best women, and to see both linked together by zeal and service to all ranks of their fellow-creatures, this is what my heart desires, this is what American men and women owe to the country whose debt to them in the past may be recognized, while its claim upon them in the future extends far beyond the limits and the records with which we have become familiar." -Julia Ward Howe.