Maurice Maeterlinck is a Noble Prize winning author from Belgian. He was a poet, playwright and essayist. Maeterlinck writes about the meaning of life and death. His education was at a religious school where only religious material was allowed. This may account for his distaste for the Catholic Church and organized religion. "The Past" and "Luck," were written in 1901. The other spieces, "The Mystery of Justice," "The Evolution of Mystery," and "The Kingdom of Matter," are anterior to "The Life of the Bee," and appeared in the Fortnightly Review in 1899 and 1900. The essay on "The Past" appeared in the March number of the Fortnightly Review and of the New York Independent; and parts of "The Mystery of Justice" in this last journal and Harper's Magazine.