"The mysterious seems to have lost a great deal of its attraction for him. Only the great, the 'metaphysical mystery,' 'the unknowable essence of reality,' continues to chain him. But the many mysteries which have dominated the mind and the life of men, and which possess no sufficient reality, he would now banish from art as well. Fate, divine justice, and all those other obsolete ideas have no longer the power to dominate even the imagination. Life, the life of the artist too, must be cleansed of all that is unreal."
Maeterlinck added to the above (these words are quoted in French):
"I do not know whether I am doing better or worse; all I do know is that I want to express things more and more simple, things more and more human, less and less brilliant, more and more true."[3]
The change in Maeterlinck is generally ascribed to the inspiration of Mme Georgette Leblanc. He has himself drawn her portrait in a chapter of a later book, Le double Jardin. In 1904 she published a novel, Le Choix de la Vie; it is full of the words "beauty" and "happiness."
Happiness is what humanity was made for, Maeterlinck teaches in Wisdom and Destiny. Misery is an illness of humanity, just as illness is a misery of man. We ought to have doctors for human misery, just as we have doctors for illness. Because illness is common, it does not follow that we ought never to talk of health; and the fact that we live in the midst of misery is no reason why the moralist should not make happiness his starting-point. To be wise is to learn to be happy.
To be happy is only to have freed our soul from the unrest of unhappiness. To be happy we must learn to separate our exterior destiny from our moral destiny. Nothing happens to men except what they will shall happen to them. We have very little influence over a certain number of exterior events; but we have a very powerful action on what these events become in ourselves. It is what happens to most men that darkens or lightens their life; but the interior life of good men itself lightens all that happens to them. If you have been betrayed, it is not the treason that matters; it is the forgiveness that has come of it in your soul. Nothing happens which is not of the same nature as ourselves. Climb the mountain or descend to the village, you will find none but yourself on the highroads of chance.
In proportion as we become wise, we escape from some of our instinctive destinies. Every man who is able to diminish the blind force of instinct in himself, diminishes around him the force of destiny. Destiny has remained a barbarian; it cannot reach souls that have grown nobler than itself. That is why tragic poets rarely permit a sage to appear on the scene; no drama ever happens among sages, and the presence of the sage paralyses destiny. There is not a single tragedy in which fatality reigns; what the hero combats in all of them is not destiny, but wisdom. If predestination exists, it only exists in character; and character can be modified. Fatality obeys those who dare give it orders, and therefore there is no inevitable tragedy.
The shadow of destiny casts an enormous shadow over the valley it seems to drown in darkness, and in this shadow we are born; but many men can travel beyond it; and those who cannot may find happiness in wisdom which no catastrophe can reach.
But what is wisdom? Consciousness of oneself; knowledge of oneself. It is not reason: reason opens the door to wisdom. It is from the threshold of reason that all sages set out; but they travel in different directions. Reason gives birth to justice; wisdom gives birth to goodness. There is no love in reason; there is much in wisdom. Not reason, but love, must be the glass in which the flower of genuine wisdom is cultivated. It is true that reason is found at the root of wisdom; but wisdom is not the flower of reason. Wisdom is the light of love; love, and you will be wise.
And does the sage never suffer? He suffers; and suffering is one of the elements of his wisdom. It is not suffering we must avoid, but the discouragement—it brings to those who receive it like a master. People suffer little by suffering itself; they suffer enormously by the way they accept it. Misfortune comes to us, but it only does what it is ordered to do.