The collocation of authors so widely at variance in their moral and artistic aims as are those assembled in this book may be defended by the safe and simple argument that all of these authors have exerted, each in his own way, an influence of singular range and potency. The gathering together of Maeterlinck, Nietzsche, Strindberg, and Tolstoy under the hospitality of a common book-cover permits of a supplementary explanation on the ground of a certain fundamental likeness far stronger than their only too obvious diversities. They are one and all, radical in thought, and, with differing strength of intention, reformers of society, inasmuch as their speculations and aspirations are relevant to practical problems of living. And yet what gives them such a durable hold on our attention is not their particular apostolate, but the fact that their artistic impulses ascend from the subliminal regions of the inner life, and that their work somehow brings one into touch with the hidden springs of human action and human fate. This means, in effect, that all of them are mystics by original cast of mind and that notwithstanding any difference, however apparently violent, of views and theories, they follow the same introspective path towards the recognition and interpretation of the law of life. From widely separated ethical premises they thus arrive at an essentially uniform appraisal of personal happiness as a function of living. Maurice Maeterlinck: a study in mysticism August Strindberg: a study in eccentricity Friedrich Nietzsche: a study in exaltation Leo Tolstoy: a study in revivalism --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.