YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
DEPOSITED by the
LINONIAN AND BROTHERS LIBRARY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
A MODERN SYMPOSIUM.
THE MEANING OF GOOD.
JUSTICE &* LIBERTY, a Political
Dialogue.
PROBLEMS OF THE DAY SERIES
RELIGION <S-» IMMORTALITY.
LETTERS FROM JOHN CHINAMAN.
RELIGION : A Forecast.

APPEARANCES

APPEARANCES

BEING

NOTES OF TRAVEL

BY

G. LOWES DICKINSON
AUTHOR OF "A MODERN SYMPOSIUM,"
"JUSTICE AND LIBERTY," ETC.

MCMXIV

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LONDON S? TORONTO
J. M. DENT 6? SONS LIMITED
NEW YORK : DOUBLED AY, PAGE & CO.

All rights reserved

PREFACE
The articles included in this book have already ap
peared, those from the East in the Manchester Guardian,
those from America in the English Review. In re
printing them, I have chosen a title which may serve
also as an apology. What I offer is not Reality ; but
appearances to me. From such appearances perhaps,
in time, Reality may be constructed. I claim only
to make my contribution. I do so because the new
contact between East and West is perhaps the most
important fact of our age ; and the problems of action
and thought which it creates can only be solved as each
civilisation tries to understand the others, and, by
so doing, better to understand itself. These articles
represent at any rate a good will to understand ; and
they may, I hope, for that reason throw one gleam of
light on the darkness.
For the opportunity of travelling in the East I am
indebted to the munificence of Mr. Albert Kahn of
Paris, who has founded What are known in this country

vi APPEARANCES
as the Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowships.1 The
existence of this endowment is perhaps not as widely
known as it should be. And if this volume should be
the occasion of leading others to take advantage of the
founder's generosity it will not have been written in
vain. I have hesitated long before deciding to republish
the letters on America. They were written in 1909,
before the election of President Wilson, and all that
led up to and is implied in that event. It was not,
however, the fact that, so far, they are out of date, that
caused me to hesitate. For they deal only incidentally
with current politics, and whatever value they may
have is as a commentary on phases of American civilisa
tion which are of more than transitory significance.
Much has happened in the United States during the
last few years which is of great interest and importance.
The conflict between democracy and plutocracy has
become more conscious and more acute ; there have
been important developments in the labour movement ;
and capital has been so " harassed " by legislation that
it may, for the moment, seem odd to capitalists to find
America called " the paradise of Plutocracy." No
doubt the American public has awakened to its situation
1 These Fellowships, each of the value of ;£66o, were established
to enable the persons appointed to them to travel round the world.
The Trust is administered at the University of London, and full
information regarding it can be obtained from the Principal, Sir
Henry Miers, F.R.S., who is Honorary Secretary to the Trustees.

PREFACE

vn

since 1909. But such awakenings take a long time
to transform the character of a civilisation; and all
that has occurred serves only to confirm the contention
in the text that in the new world the same situation
is arising that confronts the old one.
What made me hesitate was something more important
than the date at which the letters were written. There
is in them a note of exasperation which I would have
wished to remove if I could. But I could not, without a
complete rewriting, by which, even if it were possible
to me, more would have been lost than gained. It is
this note of exasperation which has induced me hitherto
to keep the letters back, in spite of requests to the con
trary from American friends and publishers. But the
opportunity of adding them as a pendant to letters
from the East, where they fall naturally into their place
as a complement and a contrast, has finally overcome
my scruples ; the more so, as much that is said of
America is as typical of all the West, as it is foreign to
all the East. That this Western civilisation, against
which I have so much to say, is nevertheless the civilisa
tion in which I would choose to live, in which I believe,
nd about which all my hopes centre, I have endeavoured
to make clear in the concluding essay. And my readers,
I hope, if any of them persevere to the end, will feel
that they have been listening, after all, to the voice of
a friend, even if the friend be of that disagreeable kind
called " candid."

CONTENTS

PART I
INDIA
PAGE
I. In the Red Sea  3
II. Ajanta  7
III. Ulster in India  12
IV. Anglo-India  16
V. A Mystery Play  20
VI. An Indian Saint  24
VII. A Village in Bengal  28
VIII. Sri Ramakrishna  32
IX. The Monstrous Regimen of Women . . 38
X. The Buddha at Burupudur ... 42
XI. A Malay Theatre  47

PART II
CHINA
I. First Impressions of China
II. Nanking
III. In the Yangtse Gorges
IV. Pekin ....
V. The Englishman Abroad
VI. China in Transition
VII. A Sacred Mountain

55
60
65 72
798795

x APPEARANCES PART III
JAPAN PAGE
I. First Impressions of Japan . . . 105
II. A "No" Dance  111
III. Nikko  116
IV. Divine Right in Japan . . .122
V. Fuji  129
VI. Japan and America  136
VII. Home  142

PART IV
AMERICA
I. The " Divine Average "
II. A Continent of Pioneers
III. Niagara 
IV. " The Modern Pulpit "
V. In the Rockies
VI. In the Adirondacks
VII. The Religion of Business .
VIII. Red-Bloods and " Mollycoddles
IX. Advertisement
X. Culture ....
XI. ANTiEUS 
Concluding Essay

149153
160164171178184
192 199
205211 218

PART I
INDIA

I
IN THE RED SEA
" But why do you do it ? " said the Frenchman. From
the saloon above came a sound of singing, and I re
cognised a well-known hymn. The sun was blazing on
a foam-flecked sea ; a range of islands lifted red rocks
into the glare ; the wind blew fresh ; and, from above,
" Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling."
Male voices were singing ; voices whose owners, beyond
a doubt, had no idea of clinging to anything. Female
voices, too, of dingers, perhaps, but hardly to a cross.
" Why do you do it ? " — I began to explain. " For
the same reason that we play deck-quoits and shuffle-
board ; for the same reason that we dress for dinner.
It's the system." " The system ? " " Yes. What I
call Anglicanism. It's a form of idealism. It consists
in doing the proper thing." " But why should the
proper thing be done ? " " That question ought not
to be asked. Anglicanism is an idealistic creed. It
is anti-utilitarian and anti-rational. It does not ask
questions ; it has faith. The proper thing is the proper
[3]

APPEARANCES
thing, and because it is the proper thing it is done."
" At least," he said, " you do not pretend that this is
religion ? " " No. It has nothing to do with religion.
But neither is it, as you too simply suppose, hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy implies that you know what religion is, and
counterfeit it. But these people do not know, and they
are not counterfeiting. When they go to church they
are not thinking of religion. They are thinking of the
social system. The officers and civilians singing up
there first learned to sing in the village church. They
walked to the church from the great house ; the great
house stood in its park ; the park was enclosed by the
estate ; and the estate was surrounded by other estates.
The service in the village church stood for all that.
And the service in the saloon stands for it still. At
bottom, what that hymn means is not that these men
are Christians, but that they are carrying England to
India, to Burma, to China." " It is a funny thing,"
the Frenchman mused, " to carry to 300 million Hindus
and Mahometans, and 400 million Confucians, Buddhists,
and devil-worshippers. What do they do with it when
they get there ? " " They plant it down in little oases
all over the country, and live in it. It is the shell that
protects them in those oceans of impropriety. And
from that shell they govern the world." " But how
can they govern what they can't even see ? " " They
govern all the better. If once they could see, they
would be lost. Doubt would enter in. And it is the
[4]

IN THE RED SEA
virtue of the Englishman that he never doubts. That is
what the system does for him."
At this moment a voice was borne down the breeze.
It was that of my travelling companion, and it appeared,
as he approached, that he was discoursing to the captain
on the merits of Dostoievsky's novels. He is no re
specter of persons ; he imposes his own conversation ;
and the captain, though obviously puzzled, was polite.
" Russians may be like that," he was remarking as he
passed, " but Englishmen aren't." " No," said my
friend, " but don't you wish they were ? " "I do not,"
said the captain with conviction. I looked at the
Frenchman. " There," I said, " behold the system."
" But your friend ? " " Ah, but he, like myself, is a
pariah. Have you not observed ? They are quite
polite. They have even a kind of respect — such as our
public school boys have — for anyone who is queer, if only
he is queer enough. But we don't " belong," and they
know it. We are outside the system. At bottom we
are dangerous, like foreigners. And they don't quite
approve of our being let loose in India." " Besides, you
talk to the Indians." " Yes, we talk to the Indians."
" And that is contrary to the system ? " " Yes, on
board the boat ; it's all very well while you're still in
England." " A strange system — to perpetuate be
tween rulers and ruled an impassable gulf ! " " Yes.
But, as Mr. Podsnap remarked, " so it is.' "
We had penetrated to the bows of the ship and hung
[51

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looking over. Suddenly, just under the surf, there was
an emerald gleam ; another ; then a leap and a dive ;
a leap and a dive again. A pair of porpoises were
playing round the bows with the ease, the spontaneity,
the beauty of perfect and happy life. As we watched
them the same mood grew in us till it forced expression.
And " Oh," I said, " the ship's a prison 1 " " No,"
said the Frenchman, " it's the system."

[6]

II
AJANTA
A dusty road running through an avenue across the
great plateau of the Deccan ; scanty crops of maize
and cotton ; here and there low hills, their reddish soil
sparsely clothed with trees ; to the north, a receding
line of mountains ; elsewhere infinite space and blazing
light. Our " tonga," its pair of wheels and its white
awning rolling and jolting behind two good horses,
passes long lines of bullock-carts. Indians, walking
beside them with their inimitable gait, make exquisite
gestures of abjection to the clumsy white Sahibs huddled
uncomfortably on the back seat. Their robes of vivid
colour, always harmoniously blent, leave bare the slender
brown legs and often the breast and back. Children
stark naked ride on their mothers' hips or their fathers'
shoulder. Now and again the oxen are unyoked at a
dribble of water, and a party rests and eats in the shade.
Otherwise it is one long march with bare feet over the
burning soil.
We are approaching a market. The mud walls of a
village appear. And outside, by a stream shrunk now
[71

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into muddy pools, shimmers and wimmers a many-
coloured crowd, buzzing among their waggons and
awnings and improvised stalls. We ford the shallow
stream, where women are washing clothes, cleaning
their teeth, and drinking from the same water, and pass
among the bags of corn, the sugar-cane, and sweetmeats,
saluted gravely but unsolicited.
Then on again for hours, the road now solitary, till as
day closes we reach Fardapur. A cluster of mud-walled
compounds and beehive huts lies about a fortified en
closure, where the children sprawl and scream, and a
Brahmin intones to silent auditors. Outside they are
drawing water from the puddles of the stream. And
gradually over the low hills and the stretches of yellow
grass the after-glow spreads a transfiguring light. Out
of a rosy flush the evening star begins to shine ; the
crickets cry ; a fresh breeze blows ; and another pitiless
day drops into oblivion.
Next day, at dawn, we walk the four miles to the
famous caves, guided by a boy who wears the Nizam's
livery, and explains to us, in a language we do not
know, but with perfect lucidity, that it is to him, and
no one else, that backsheesh is due. He sings snatches
of music as old and strange as the hills ; picks us balls
of cotton, and prickly pear ; and once stops to point
to the fresh tracks of a panther. We are in the winding
gorge of a watercourse ; and presently, at a turn, in a
semicircle facing south, we see in the cliff the long line
[8]

AJANTA
of caves. As we enter the first an intolerable odour
meets us, and a flight of bats explains the cause. Gradu
ally our eyes accustom themselves to the light, and we
become conscious of a square hall, the flat roof resting on
squat pillars elaborately carved, fragments of painting
on the walls and ceiling, narrow slits opening into
dark cells, and opposite the entrance, set back in a
shrine, a colossal Buddha, the fight falling full on the
solemn face, the upturned feet, the expository hands.
This is a monastery, and most of the caves are on the
same plan ; but one or two are long halls, presumably
for worship, with barrel-vaulted roofs, and at the end
a great solid globe on a pedestal.
Of the art of these caves I will not speak. What
little can be seen of the painting — and only ill-lighted
fragments remain — is full of tenderness, refinement, and
grace ; no touch of drama ; no hint of passion. The
sculpture, stripped of its stucco surface, is rude but
often impressive. But what impresses most is not the
art but the religion of the place. In this terrible
country, where the great forces of nature, drought and
famine and pestilence, the intolerable sun, the intoler
able rain, and the exuberance of life and death, have
made of mankind a mere passive horde cowering before
inscrutable Powers— here, more than anywhere, men
were bound under a yoke of observance and ritual to
the gods they had fashioned and the priests who inter
preted their will. Then came the Deliverer to set
[93

APPEARANCES
them free not for but from life, teaching them how to
escape from that worst of all evils, rebirth again and
again into a world of infinite suffering, unguided by
any reason to any good end. " There is no god," said
this strange master, " there is no soul ; but there is
life after death, life here in this hell, unless you will
learn to deliver yourselves by annihilating desire."
They listened ; they built monasteries ; they medi
tated; and now and again, here, perhaps, in these
caves, one or other attained enlightenment. But the
cloud of Hinduism, lifted for a moment, rolled back
heavier than ever. The older gods were seated too
firmly on their thrones. Shiva— creator, preserver,
destroyer — expelled the Buddha. And that passive
figure, sublime in its power of mind, sits for ever alone
in the land of his birth, exiled from light, in a cloud of
clinging bats.
But outside proceeds the great pageant of day and
night, and the patient, beautiful people labour without
hope, while universal nature, symbolised by Shiva's foot,
presses heavily on their heads and forbids them the
stature of man. Only the white man here, bustling,
ungainly, aggressive, retains his freedom and acts
rather than suffers. One understands at last the full
meaning of the word " environment." Because of this
sun, because of this soil, because of their vast numbers,
these people are passive, religious, fatalistic. Because
of our cold and rain in the north, our fresh springs
[10 J

AJANTA
and summers, we are men of action, of science, of no
reflection. The seed is the same, but according to the
soil it brings forth differently. Here the patience, the
beauty, the abjection before the Devilish-Divine ;
there the defiance, the cult of the proud self. And
these things have met. To what result ?

["]

Ill
ULSTER IN INDIA
" Are you a Home Ruler ? " " Yes. Are you ? "
Instantly a torrent of protest. He was a Mahometan,
eminent in law and politics ; clever, fluent, forensic,
with a passion for hearing himself talk, and addressing
one always as if one were a public meeting. He ap
proached his face close to mine, gradually backing me
into the wall. And I realised the full meaning of
Carlyle's dictum "to be a mere passive bucket to be
pumped into can be agreeable to no human being."
It was not, naturally, the Irish question for its own
sake that interested him. But he took it as a type of
the Indian question. Here, too, he maintained, there
is an Ulster, the Mahometan community. Here, too,
there are Nationalists, the Hindus. Here, too, a
" loyal " minority, protected by a beneficent and
impartial Imperial Government. Here, too, a majority
of " rebels " bent on throwing off that Government in
order that they may oppress the minority. Here,
too, an ideal of independence hypocritically masked
under the phrase " self-government." " It is a law
[12]

ULSTER IN INDIA
of political science that where there are two mino
rities they should stand together against the majority.
The Hindus want to get rid of you, as they want to
get rid of us. And for that reason alone, if there were
not a thousand others " — there were, he hinted, but,
rhetorically, he " passed them over in silence " — " for
that reason alone I am loyal to the British raj." It
had never occurred to me to doubt it. But I questioned,
when I got a moment's breathing space, whether really
the Hindu community deliberately nourished this dark
conspiracy. He had no doubt, so far as the leaders
were concerned ; and he mistrusted the " moderates "
more than the extremists, because they were cleverer.
He " multiplied examples " — it was his phrase. The
movement for primary education, for example. It had
nothing to do with education. It was a plot to teach
the masses Hindi, in order that they might be swept into
the anti-British, anti-Mahometan current. As to minor
matters, no Hindu had ever voted for a Mahometan,
no Hindu barrister ever sent a client to a Mahometan
colleague. Whereas in all these matters, one was led
to infer, Mahometans were conciliation and tolerance
itself. I knew that the speaker himself had secured
the election of Mahometans to all the seats in the
Council. But I refrained from referring to the matter.
Then there was caste. A Hindu will not eat with a
Mahometan, and this was taken as a personal insult.
I suggested that the English were equally boycotted ;
[13]

APPEARANCES
but that we regarded the boycott as a religious obli
gation, not as a social stigma. But, like the Irish
Ulstermen, he was not there to listen to argument.
He rolled on like a river. None of us could escape. He
detected the first signs of straying, and beckoned us
back to the flock. " Mr. Audubon, this is important."
" Mr. Coryat, you must listen to this." Coryat, at
last, grew restive, and remarked rather tartly that no
doubt there was friction between the two communities,
but that the worst way to deal with it was by recrimi
nation. He agreed ; with tears in his eyes he agreed.
There was nothing he had not done, no advance he
had not made, to endeavour to bridge the gulf. All
in vain ! Never were such obstinate fellows as these
Hindus. And he proceeded once more to " multiply
examples." As we said " Good-bye " in the small
hours of the morning he pressed into our hands copies
of his speeches and addresses. And we left him pero
rating on the steps of the hotel.
A painfully acquired mistrust of generalisation pre
vents me from saying that this is the Mahometan point
of view. Indeed, I have reason to know that it is not.
But it is a Mahometan point of view in one province.
And it was endorsed, more soberly, by less rhetorical
members of the community. Some twenty-five years
ago, they say, Mahometans woke to the fact that they
were dropping behind in the race for influence and
power, They started a campaign of education and
[14]

ULSTER IN INDIA
organisation. At every point they found themselves
thwarted ; and always, behind the obstacle, lurked a
Hindu. Lord Morley's reform of the Councils, intended
to unite all sections, had had the opposite effect.
Nothing but the separate electorates had saved Maho
metans from political extinction. And precisely because
they desired that extinction Hindus desired mixed
electorates. The elections to the Councils have exas
perated the antagonism between the two communities.
And an enemy might accuse the Government of being
actuated, in that reform, by the Machiavellian maxim
" Divide et impera."
What the Hindus have to say to all this I have not
had an opportunity of learning. But they too, I con
ceive, can " multiply examples " for their side. To a
philosophic observer two reflections suggest themselves.
One, that representative government can only work
when there is real give and take between the contend
ing parties. The other, that to most men, and most
nations, religion means nothing more than antagonism
to some other religion. Witness Ulster in Ireland ; and
witness, equally, Ulster in India.

[15]

IV
ANGLO-INDIA
From the gallery of the high hall we look down on the
assembled society of the cantonment. The scene is
commonplace enough ; twaddle and tea, after tennis ;
" frivolling " — it is their word ; women too empty-
headed and men too tired to do anything else. This
mill-round of work and exercise is maintained like a
religion. The gymkhana represents the " compulsory
games " of a public school. It is part of the " white
man's burden." He plays, as he works, with a sense of
responsibility. He is bored, but boredom is a duty,
and there's nothing else to do.
The scene is commonplace. Yes ! But this afternoon
a band is playing. The music suits the occasion. It is
soft, melodious, sentimental. It provokes a vague sen
sibility, and makes no appeal to the imagination. At
least it should not, from its quality. But the power of
music is incalculable. It has an essence independent
of its forms. And by virtue of that essence its poorest
manifestations can sink a shaft into the springs of life.
So as I listen languidly the scene before me detaches
[16]

ANGLO-INDIA
itself from actuality and floats away on the stream of
art. It becomes a symbol ; and around and beyond it,
in some ideal space, other symbols arise and begin to
move. I see the East as an infinite procession. Huge
Bactrian camels balance their bobbing heads as they
pad deliberately over the burning dust. Laden asses,
cattle, and sheep and goats move on in troops. Black-
bearded men, men with beard and hair dyed red,
women pregnant or carrying babies on their hips,
youths like the Indian Bacchus with long curling hair,
children of all ages, old men magnificent and fierce, all
the generations of Asia pass and pass on, seen like a
frieze against a rock background, blazing with colour,
rhythmical and fluent, marching menacingly down out
of infinite space on to this little oasis of Englishmen.
Then, suddenly, they are an ocean ; and the Anglo-
Indian world floats upon it like an Atlantic liner. It
has its gymnasium, its swimming-bath, its card-rooms,
its concert-room. It has its first and second class and
steerage, well marked off. It dresses for dinner every
night ; it has an Anglican service on Sunday ; it flirts
mildly ; it is bored ; but above all it is safe. It has
water-tight compartments. It is " unsinkable." The
band is playing ; and when the crash comes it will
not stop. No ; it will play this music, this, which
is in my ears. Is it Gounod's " Faust " or an Angli
can hymn ? No matter 1 It is the same thing, sen
timental, and not imaginative. And sentimentally,
[17] B

APPEARANCES
not imaginatively, the Englishman will die. He will
not face the event, but he will stand up to it. He will
realise nothing, but he will shrink from nothing. Of all
the stories about the loss of the Titanic the best and
most characteristic is that of the group of men who sat
conversing in the second-class smoking-room, till one
of them said, " Now she's going down. Let's go and
sit in the first-class saloon." And they did. How
touching ! How sublime ! How English ! The
Titanic sinks. With a roar the machinery crashes
from stem to bow. Dust on the water, cries on the
water, then vacuity and silence. The East has swept
over this colony of the West. And still its generations
pass on, rhythmically swinging ; slaves of Nature,
not, as in the West, rebels against her ; cyclical as her
seasons and her stars ; infinite as her storms of dust ;
identical as the leaves of her trees ; purposeless as her
cyclones and her earthquakes.
The music stops and I rub my eyes. Yes, it is only
the club, only tea and twaddle ! Or am I wrong ?
There is more in these men and women than appears.
They stand for the West, for the energy of the world,
for all, in this vast Nature, that is determinate and
purposive, not passively repetitionary. And if they
do not know it, if they never hear the strain that trans
poses them and their work into a tragic dream, if tennis
is tennis to them, and a valse a valse, and an Indian a
native, none the less they are what a poet would see
[18J

ANGLO-INDIA
them to be, an oasis in the desert, a liner on the ocean,
ministers of the life within life that is the hope, the
inspiration, and the meaning of the world. In my
heart of hearts I apologise as I prolong the banalities
of parting, and almost vow never again to abuse
Gounod's music.

[19]

V
A MYSTERY PLAY
A few lamps set on the floor lit up the white roof. On
either side the great hall was open to the night ; and
now and again a bird flew across, or a silent figure
flitted from dark to dark. On a low platform sat the
dancers, gorgeously robed. All were boys. The leader,
a peacock-fan flashing in his head-dress, personated
Krishna. Beside him sat Rhada, his wife. The rest
were the milkmaids of the legend. They sat like
statues, and none of them moved at our entry. But
the musicians, who were seated on the ground, rose and
salaamed, and instantly began to play. There were five
instruments — a miniature harmonium (terrible inno
vation), two viols, of flat, unresonant tone, a pair of
cymbals, and a small drum. The ear, at first, detected
little but discordant chaos, but by degrees a form
became apparent — short phrases, of strong rhythm,
in a different scale from ours, repeated again and again,
and strung on a thread of loose improvisation. Every
now and again the musicians burst into song. Their
voices were harsh and nasal, but their art was compli-
[20]

A MYSTERY PLAY
cated and subtle. Clearly, this was not barbarous
music, it was only strange, and its interest increased,
as the ear became accustomed to it. Suddenly, as
though they could resist no longer, the dancers, who had
not moved, leapt from the platform and began their
dance. It was symbolical; Krishna was its centre,
and the rest were wooing him. Desire and its frustration
and fulfilment were the theme. Yet it was not sensual,
or not merely so. The Hindus interpret in a religious
spirit this legendary sport of Krishna with the milk
maids. It symbolises the soul's wooing of God. And
so these boys interpreted it. Their passion, though it
included the flesh, was not of the flesh. The mood
was rapturous, but not abandoned; ecstatic, but not
orgiastic. There were moments of a hushed suspense
when hardly a muscle moved ; only the arms undulated
and the feet and hands vibrated. Then a break into
swift whirling, on the toes or on the knees, into leaping
and stamping, swift flight and pursuit. A pause again ;
a slow march • a rush with twinkling feet ; and always,
on those young faces, even in the moment of most
excitement, a look of solemn rapture, as though they
were carried out of themselves into the divine. I have
seen dancing more accomplished, more elaborate, more
astonishing than this. But never any that seemed
to me to fulfil so well the finest purposes of the art.
The Russian ballet, in the retrospect, seems trivial
by comparison. It was secular ; but this was religious.
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For the first time I seemed to catch a glimpse
of what the tragic dance of the Greeks might have
been like. The rhythms were not unlike those of
Greek choruses, the motions corresponded strictly to
the rhythms, and all was attuned to a high religious
mood. In such dancing the flesh becomes spirit, the
body a transparent emblem of the soul.
After that the play, I confess, was a drop into bathos.
We descended to speech, even to tedious burlesque.
But the analogy was all the closer to mediaeval mysteries.
In ages of Faith religion is not only sublime ; it is
intimate, humorous, domestic ; it sits at the hearth and
plays in the nursery. So it is in India where the age of
Faith has never ceased. What was represented that
night was an episode in the story of Krishna. The
characters were the infant god, his mother, Jasodha,
and an ancient Brahmin who has come from her own
country to congratulate her on the birth of a child.
He is a comic character — the sagging belly and the
painted face of the pantomime. He answers Jasodha's
inquiries after friends and relations at home. She offers
him food. He professes to have no appetite, but, on
being pressed, demands portentous measures of rice
and flour. While she collects the material for his meal,
he goes to bathe in the Jumna ; and the whole ritual
of his ablutions is elaborately travestied, even a crocodile
being introduced in the person of one of the musicians,
who rudely pulls him by the leg as he is rolling in
[22]

A MYSTERY PLAY
imaginary water. His bathing finished, he retires and
cooks his food. When it is ready he falls into prayer.
But during his abstraction the infant Krishna crawls up
and begins devouring the food. Returning to himself,
the Brahmin, in a rage, runs off into the darkness of the
hall. Jasodha pursues him and brings him back. And
he begins once more to cook his food. This episode was
repeated three times in all its detail, and I confess I
found it insufferably tedious. The third time Jasodha
scolds the child and asks him why he does it. He replies
— and here comes the pretty point of the play — that the
Brahmin, in praying to God and offering him the food,
unwittingly is praying to him and offering to him, and in
eating the food he has but accepted the offering. The
mother does not understand, but the Brahmin does, and
prostrates himself before his Lord.
This is crude enough art, but at any rate it is genuine.
Like all primitive art, it is a representation of what is
traditionally believed and popularly felt. The story
is familiar to the audience and intimate to their lives.
It represents details which they witness every day, and
at the same time it has religious significance. Out of it
might grow a great drama, as once in ancient Greece.
And perhaps from no other origin can such a drama
arise.

[23]

VI
AN INDIAN SAINT
It was at Benares that we met him. He led us through
the maze of the bazaars, his purple robe guiding us like
a star, and brought us out by the mosque of Aurungzebe.
Thence a long flight of stairs plunged sheer to the
Ganges, shining below in the afternoon sun. We de
scended ; but, turning aside before we reached the
shore, came to a tiny house perched on a terrace above
the ghat. We took off our shoes in the anteroom and
passed through a second chamber, with its river-side
open to the air, and reached a tiny apartment, where he
motioned us to a divan. We squatted and looked round.
Some empty bottles were the only furniture. But on
the wall hung the picture we had come to see. It
was a symbolic tree, and perhaps as much like a tree
as what it symbolised was like the universe. Embedded
in its trunk and branches were coloured circles and signs,
and from them grew leaves and flowers of various hues.
Below was a garden lit by a rising sun, and a black river
where birds and beasts pursued and devoured one
another. At our request he took a pointer and began to
[24]

AN INDIAN SAINT
explain. I am not sure that I well understood or well
remember, but something of this kind was the gist of
it. In the beginning was Parabrahma, existing in
himself, a white circle at the root of the tree. Whence
sprang, following the Une of the trunk, the egg of the
universe, pregnant with all potentialities. Thence
came the energy of Brahma ; and of this there were
three aspects, the Good, the Evil, and the Neuter,
symbolised by three triangles in a circle. Thence the
trunk continued, but also thence emerged a branch to
the right and one to the left. The branch to the right
was Illusion and ended in God ; the branch to the left
was Ignorance and ended in the Soul. Thus the Soul
contemplates Illusion under the form of her gods. Up
the line of the trunk came next the Energy of Nature ;
then Pride ; then Egotism and Individuality ; whence
branched to one side Mind, to the other the senses and
the passions. Then followed the elements, fire, air,
water, and earth ; then the vegetable creation ; then
corn ; and then, at the summit of the tree, the primitive
Man and Woman, type of Humanity. The garden below
was Eden, until the sun rose ; but with light came
discord and conflict, symbolised by the river and the
beasts. Evil and conflict belong to the nature of the
created world ; and the purpose of religion is by con
templation to enable the Soul to break its bodies, and
the whole creation to return again to Parabrahma,
whence it sprung.
[25]

APPEARANCES
Why did it spring ? He did not know. For good
or for evil ? He could not say. What he knew he
knew, and what he did not know he did not. " Some
say there is no God and no Soul." He smiled. " Let
them ! '' His certainty was complete. " Can the souls
of men be reincarnated as animals ? " He shrugged his
shoulders. " Who can say ? " I tried to put in a plea
for the life of action, but he was adamant ; contempla
tion and contemplation alone can deliver us. " Our
good men," I said, " desire to make the world better,
rather than to save their own souls." " Our sages," he
replied, " are sorry for the world, but they know they
cannot help it." His religion, I urged, denied all sense
to the process of history. " There may be process in
matter," he replied, " but there is none in God." I
protested that I loved individual souls, and did not want
them absorbed in Parabrahma. He laughed his good
cheery laugh, out of his black beard, but it was clear
that he held me to be a child, imprisoned in the Ego.
I felt like that, and I hugged my Ego ; so presently he
ministered to it with sweetmeats. He even ate with
us, and smoked a cigarette. He was the most human
of men ; so human that I thought his religion could not
be as inhuman as it sounded. But it was the religion
of the East, not of the West. It refused all significance
to the temporal world ; it took no account of society
and its needs ; it sought to destroy, not to develop,
the sense and the power of Individuality. It did not
[26]

AN INDIAN SAINT
say, but it implied, that creation was a mistake ; and
if it did not profess pessimism, pessimism was its logical
outcome. I do not know whether it is the religion of a
wise race ; but I am sure it could never be that of a
strong one.
But I loved the saint, and felt that he was a brother.
Next morning, as we drifted past the long line of ghats,
watching the bright figures on the terraces and stairs,
the brown bodies in the water, and the Brahmins squat
ting on the shore, we saw him among the bathers, and
he called to us cheerily. We waved our hands and
passed on, never to see him again. East had not met
West, but at least they had shaken hands across the
gulf. The gulf, however, was profound ; for many
and many incarnations will be needed before one soul
at least can come even to wish to annihilate itself in
the Universal.

[27]

VII
A VILLAGE IN BENGAL
At 6 a.m. we got out of the train at a station on the
Ganges ; and after many delays found ourselves drifting
down the river in a houseboat. To lie on cushions,
sheltered from the sun, looking out on the moving shore,
to the sound of the leisurely plash of oars, is elysium
after a night in the train. We had seven hours of it>
and I could have wished it were more. But towards
sunset we reached our destination. At the wharf a
crowd of servants were waiting to touch the feet of our
hosts who had travelled with us. They accompanied
us through a tangle of palms, bananas, mangoes, canes,
past bamboo huts raised on platforms of hard, dry mud,
to the central place where a great banyan stood in
front of the temple. We took off our shoes and entered
the enclosure, followed by half the village, silent,
dignified, and deferential. Over ruined shrines of red
brick, elaborately carved, clambered and twined the
sacred peepul tree. And within a more modern building
were housed images of Krishna and Rhada, and other
symbols of what we call too hastily idolatry. Outside
[28]

A VILLAGE IN BENGAL
was a circular platform of brick where these dolls are
washed in milk at the great festivals of the year. We
passed on, and watched the village weaver at his work,
sitting on the ground with his feet in a pit working the
pedals of his loom ; while outside, in the garden, a
youth was running up and down setting up, thread by
thread, the long strands of the warp. By the time we
reached the house it was dusk. A lamp was brought
into the porch. Musicians and singers squatted on the
floor. Behind them a white-robed crowd faded into
the night. And we listened to hymns composed by the
village saint, who had lately passed away.
First there was a prayer for forgiveness. " Lord,
forgive us our sins. You must forgive, for you are
called the merciful. And it's so easy for you ! And,
if you don't, what becomes of your reputation ? " Next,
a call to the ferry. " Come and cross over with me.
Krishna is the boat and Rhada the sail. No storms
can wreck us. Come, cross over with me." Then a
prayer for deliverance from the " well " of the world
where we are imprisoned by those dread foes the five
senses of the mind. Then a rhapsody on God, invisible,
incomprehensible. " He speaks, but He is not seen.
He lives in the room with me, but I cannot find Him.
He brings to market His moods, but the marketer never
appears. Some call Him fire, some ether. But I ask
His name in vain. I suppose I am such a fool that they
will not tell it me." Then a strange ironical address to
[29]

APPEARANCES
Krishna. " Really, sir, your conduct is very odd !
You flirt with the Gopis ! You put Rhada in a sulk,
and then ask to be forgiven ! You say you are a god,
and yet you pray to God ! Really, sir, what are we to
think ? " Lastly, a mystic song, how Krishna has
plunged into the ocean of Rhada ; how he is there
drifting, helpless and lost. Can we not save him ?
But no ! It is because his love is not perfect and pure.
And that is why he must be incarnated again and again
in the avatars.
Are these people idolaters, these dignified old men,
these serious youths, these earnest, grave musicians ?
Look at their temple, and you say " Yes." Listen to
their hymns, and you say " No." Reformers want to
educate them, and, perhaps, they are right. But if
education is to mean the substitution of the gramophone
and music-hall songs for this traditional art, these
native hymns ? I went to bed pondering, and was
awakened at six by another chorus telling us it was time
to get up. We did so, and visited the school, set up by
my friend as an experiment ; a mud floor, mud-lined
walls, all scrupulously clean ; and squatting round the
four sides children of all ages, all reciting their lessons
at once, and all the lessons different. They were learn
ing to read and write their native language, and that,
at least, seemed harmless enough. But parents com
plained that it unfitted them for the fields. " Our
fathers did not do it " — that, said my impatient young
[30j

A VILLAGE IN BENGAL
host, is their reply to every attempt at reform. In his
library were all the works of Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Wells,
and Shaw, as well as all the technical journals of scientific
agriculture. He lectured them on the chemical con
stituents of milk and the crossing of sugar-canes. They
embraced his feet, sang their hymns, and did as their
fathers had done. He has a hard task before him,
but one far better worth attempting than the legal and
political activities in which most young Zemindars
indulge. And, as he said, here you see the fields and
hear the birds, and here you can bathe in the Ganges.
We did ; and then breakfasted ; and then set out in
palanquins for the nearest railway station. The bearers
sang a rhythmic chant as they bore us smoothly along
through mustard and pulses, yellow and orange and
mauve. The sun blazed hot ; the bronzed figures
streamed with sweat ; the cheerful voices never failed
or flagged. I dozed and drowsed, while East and West
in my mind wove a web whose pattern I cannot trace.
But a pattern there is. And some day historians will
be able to find it.

[3i]

VIII
SRI RAMAKRISHNA
As we dropped down the Hooghly they pointed to a
temple on the shore as lately the home of Sri Rama-
krishna. He was only a name to me, and I did not pay
much attention, though I had his " Gospel " x actually
under my arm. I was preoccupied with the sunset,
burning behind a veil of smoke ; and presently, as we
landed, with the great floating haystacks smouldering
at the wharf in the red afterglow. As we waited for
the tram, someone said, " Would you like to see Kali ? "
and we stepped aside to the little shrine. Within it
was the hideous idol, black and many-armed, decked
with tinsel and fed with the blood of goats ; and there
swept over me a wave of the repulsion I had felt from
the first for the Hindu religion, its symbols, its cult,
its architecture, even its philosophy. Seated in the
tram, it was with an effort that I opened the " Gospel "
of Sri Ramakrishna. But at once my attention was
arrested. This was an account by a disciple of the life
and sayings of his master. And presently I read the
following :
1 Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Second Edition. Parti. Madras:
Published by the Ramakrishna Mission. 1912.
[32]

SRI RAMAKRISHNA
" Disciple. Then, sir, one may hold that God is ' with
form.' But surely He is not the earthen image that is
worshipped 1
" Master. But, my dear sir, why should you call it an
earthen image ? Surely the Image Divine is made of
the Spirit !
" The disciple cannot follow this. He goes on : But is
it not one's duty, sir, to make it clear to those who
worship images that God is not the same as the clay
form they worship, and that in worshipping they should
keep God Himself in view and not the clay images ?
"Master. You talk of ' images made of clay.'- Well,
there often comes a necessity of worshipping even such
images as these. God Himself has provided these
various forms of worship. The Lord has done all this
— to suit different men in different stages of know
ledge. " The mother so arranges the food for her children that
every one gets what agrees with him. Suppose she has
five children. Having a fish to cook, she makes different
dishes out of it. She can give each one of the children
what suits him exactly. One gets rich polow with the
fish, while she gives only a little soup to another
who is of weak digestion ; she makes a sauce of sour
tamarind for the third, fries the fish for the fourth, and
so on, exactly as it happens to agree with the stomach.
Don't you see ?
[ 33 ] c

APPEARANCES
" Disciple. Yes, sir, now I do. The Lord is to be wor
shipped in the image of clay as a spirit by the beginner.
The devotee, as he advances, may worship Him inde
pendently of the image.
"Master. Yes. And again, when he sees God he realises
that everything — image and all — is a manifestation of
the Spirit. To him the image is made of Spirit — not of
clay. God is a Spirit."
As I read this, I remembered the answer invariably
given to me when I asked about Hindu idolatry. The
people, I was told, even the humblest and most ignorant,
worshipped not the idol but what it symbolised. Actually,
this hideous Kali stood to them for the Divine Mother.
And I was told of an old woman, racked with rheu
matism, who had determined at last to seek relief from
the goddess. She returned with radiant face. She had
seen the Mother 1 And she had no more rheumatism.
In this popular religion, it would seem, the old cosmic
elements have dropped out, and the human only persist.
So that even the terrifying form of Shiva, the Destroyer,
stands only for the divine husband of Parvati, the divine
wife. Hinduism, I admitted, is not as inhuman and
superstitious as it looks. But I admitted it reluctantly
and with many reserves, remembering all I had seen
and heard of obscene rites and sculptures, of the per
petual repetition of the names of God, of parasitic
Brahmins and self-torturing ascetics.
[34]

SRI RAMAKRISHNA
What manner of man, then, was this Sri Ramakrishna ?
I turned the pages and read :
"The disciples were walking about the garden. M.
walked by himself at the cluster of five trees. It is
about five in the afternoon. Coming back to the
verandah, north of the Master's chamber, M. comes upon
a strange sight. The Master is standing still. Narendra
is singing a hymn. He and three or four other disciples
are standing with the Master in their midst. M. is
charmed with their song. Never in his life has he heard
a sweeter voice. Looking at the Master, M. marvels
and becomes speechless. The Master stands motionless.
His eyes are fixed. It is hard to say whether he is
breathing or not. This state of ecstasy, says a disciple
in low tones, is called Samadhi. M. has never seen or
heard of anything like this. He thinks to himself, ' Is
it possible that the thought of God can make a man
forget the world ? How great must be his faith and
love for God who is thrown into such a state ! ' "
" Yes," I said, " that is the Hindu ideal — ecstatic con
templation." Something in me leapt to approve it ;
but the stronger pull was to Hellenism and the West.
" Go your way, Ramakrishna," I said, " but your way
is not mine. For me and my kind action not medita
tion ; the temporal not the eternal ; the human not
the ultra-divine ; Socrates not Ramakrishna I " But
hardly had I said the words when I read on :
[35]

APPEARANCES
" M. enters. Looking at him the Master laughs and
laughs. He cries out, ' Why, look ! There he is
again ! ' The boys all join in the merriment. M. takes
his seat, and the Master tells Narendra and the other
disciples what has made him laugh. He says :
" ' Once upon a time a small quantity of opium was
given to a certain peacock at four o'clock in the after
noon. Well, punctually at four the next afternoon
who should come in but the selfsame peacock, longing
for a repetition of the favour — another dose of opium 1 '
— (Laughter.)
"M. sat watching the Master as he amused himself
with the boys. He kept up a running fire of chaff, and
it seemed as if these boys were his own age and he was
playing with them. Peals of laughter and brilliant
flashes of humour follow upon one another, calling to
mind the image of a fair when the Joy of the World is
to be had for sale."
I rubbed my eyes. Was this India or Athens ? Is
East East ? Is West West ? Are there any opposites
that exclude one another ? Or is this all-comprehensive
Hinduism, this universal toleration, this refusal to
recognise ultimate antagonisms, this " mush," in a word,
as my friends would dub it — is this, after all, the truest
and profoundest vision ?
And I read in my book :
" M.'s egotism is now completely crushed. He thinks
[36]

SRI RAMAKRISHNA
to himself : What this God-man says is indeed per
fectly true. What business have I to go about preach
ing to others ? Have I myself known God ? Do I
love God ? About God I know nothing. It would
indeed be the height of folly and vulgarity itself, of
which I should be ashamed, to think of teaching others !
This is not mathematics, or history, or literature ; it is
the science of God ! Yes, I see the force of the words
of this holy man."

[373

IX
THE MONSTROUS REGIMEN
OF WOMEN
Here at Cape Comorin, at India's southernmost point,
among the sands and the cactuses and the palms rattling
in the breeze, comes to us news of the Franchise Bill
and of militant suffragettes. And I reflect that in this
respect England is a " backward " country and Travan-
core an " advanced " one. Women here — except the
Brahmin women — are, and always have been, politically
and socially on an equality and more than an equality
with men. For this is one of the few civilised States —
for aught I know it is the only one — in which " matri
archy " still prevails. That doesn't mean — though the
word suggests it — that women govern, though, in fact,
the succession to the throne passes to women equally
with men. But it means that woman is the head of
the family, and that property follows her line, not the
man's. All women own property equally with men, and
own it in their own right. The mother's property
passes to her children, but the father's passes to his
mother's kin. The husband, in fact, is not regarded
[38]

MONSTROUS REGIMEN OF WOMEN
as related to the wife. Relationship means descent
from a common mother, whereas descent from a common
father is a negligible fact, no doubt because formerly
it was a questionable one. Women administer their
own property, and, as I am informed, administer it
more prudently than the men.
Not only so ; they have in marriage the superior
position occupied by men in the West. The Nair
woman chooses her own husband ; he comes to her
house, she does not go to his ; and, till recently, she
could dismiss him as soon as she was tired of him.
The law — man-made, no doubt ! — has recently altered
this, and now mutual consent is required for a valid
divorce. Still the woman is, at least on this point,
on an equality with the man. And the heavens have
not yet fallen. As to the vote, it is not so important
or so general here as at home. The people live under
a paternal monarchy " by right divine." The Rajah
who consolidated the kingdom, early in the eighteenth
century, handed it over formally to the god of the
temple, and administers it in his name. Incidentally
this gave him access to temple revenues. It also makes
his person sacred. So much so that in a recent prison
riot, when the convicts escaped and marched to the
police with their grievances, the Rajah had only to
appear and tell them to march back to prison, and they
did so to a man, and took their punishment. The
government, it will be seen, is not by votes. Still there
[39]

APPEARANCES
are votes for local councils, and women have them
equally with men. Any other arrangement would
have seemed merely preposterous to the Nairs ; and
perhaps if any exclusion had been contemplated it
would have been of men rather than of women.
Other incidental results follow from the equality of
the sexes. The early marriages which are the curse of
India do not prevail among the Nairs. Consequently
the schooling of girls is continued later. And this
State holds the record in all India for female education.
We visited a school of over 600 girls, ranging from
infancy to college age, and certainly I never saw school
girls look happier, keener, or more alive. Society,
clearly, has not gone to pieces under " the monstrous
regimen of women." Travancore claims, probably
with justice, to be the premier native State ; the most
advanced, the most prosperous, the most happy. Be
cause of the position of women ? Well, hardly. The
climate is delightful, the soil fertile, the natural re
sources considerable. Every man sits under his own
palm tree, and famine is unknown. The people, and
especially the children, are noticeably gay, in a land
where gaiety is not common. But one need not be
a suffragette to hold that the equality of the sexes is
one element that contributes to its well-being, and to
feel that in this respect England lags far behind Tra
vancore. Echoes of the suffrage controversy at home have led
[40]

MONSTROUS REGIMEN OF WOMEN
me to dwell upon this matter of the position of women.
But, to be candid, it will not be that that lingers in my
mind when I look back upon my sojourn here. What
then ? Perhaps a sea of palm leaves, viewed from the
lighthouse top, stretching beside the sea of blue waves ;
perhaps a sandy river bed, with brown nude figures
washing clothes in the shining pools ; perhaps the oiled
and golden skins glistening in the sun ; perhaps naked
children astride on their mothers' hips, or screaming
with laughter as they race the motor-car ; perhaps the
huge tusked elephant that barred our way for a moment
yesterday ; perhaps the jungle teeming with hidden
and menacing life ; perhaps the seashore and its tum
bling waves. One studies institutions, but one does not
love them. Often one must wish that they did not
exist, or existed in such perfection that their existence
might be unperceived. Still, as institutions go, this,
which regulates the relations of men and women, is,
I suppose, the most important. So from the surf of
the Arabian sea and the blaze of the Indian sun I send
this little object lesson.

[41]

X
THE BUDDHA AT BURUPUDUR
To the north the cone of a volcano, rising sharp
and black. To the east another. South and west a
jagged chain of hills. In the foreground ricefields and
cocoa palms. Everywhere intense green, untoned by
grey ; and in the midst of it this strange erection.
Seen from below and from a distance it looks like a
pyramid that has been pressed flat. In fact, it is a
series of terraces built round a low hill. Six of them
are rectangular ; then come three that are circular ;
and on the highest of these is a solid dome, crowned
by a cube and a spire. Round the circular terraces
are set, close together, similar domes, but hollow, and
pierced with lights, through which is seen in each a
seated Buddha. Seated Buddhas, too, line the tops
of the parapets that run round the lower terraces.
And these parapets are covered with sculpture in high
relief. One might fancy oneself walking round one
of the ledges of Dante's " Purgatorio " meditating
instruction on the walls. Here the instruction would
[42]

THE BUDDHA AT BURUPUDUR
be for the selfish and the cruel. For what is in
scribed is the legend and cult of the lord of tenderness.
Much of it remains undeciphered and unexplained.
But on the second terrace is recorded, on one side, the
life of Sakya-Muni ; on the other, his previous incar
nations. The latter, taken from the " Jatakas," are
naive and charming apologues.
For example : Once the Buddha lived upon earth as
a hare. In order to test him Indra came down from
heaven in the guise of a traveller. Exhausted and
faint, he asked the animals for help. An otter brought
fish, a monkey fruit, a jackal a cup of milk. But the
hare had nothing to give. So he threw himself into a
fire, that the wanderer might eat his roasted flesh.
Again : Once the Buddha lived upon earth as an
elephant. He was met by seven hundred travellers,
lost and exhausted with hunger. He told them where
water would be found, and, near it, the body of an
elephant for food. Then, hastening to the spot, he
flung himself over a precipice, that he might provide
the meal himself. Again : Once the Buddha lived upon
earth as a stag. A king, who was hunting him, fell
into a ravine. Whereupon the stag halted, descended,
and helped him home. All round the outer wall run
these pictured lessons. And opposite is shown the
story of Sakya-Muni himself. We see the new-born
child with his feet on lotuses. We see the fatal en
counter with poverty, sickness, and death. We see the
[43]

APPEARANCES
renunciation, the sojourn in the wilderness, the attain
ment under the bo-tree, the preaching of the Truth.
And all this sculptured gospel seems to bring home to
one, better than the volumes of the learned, what
Buddhism really meant to the masses of its followers.
It meant, surely, not the denial of the soul or of God,
but that warm impulse of pity and love that beats still
in these tender and human pictures. It meant not the
hope or desire for extinction, but the charming dream
of thousands of lives, past and to come, in many forms,
many conditions, many diverse fates. The pessimism
of the master is as little likely as his high philosophy to
have reached the mind or the heart of the people. The
whole history of Buddhism, indeed, shows that it did
not, and does not. What touched them in him was
the saint and the lover of animals and men. And this
love it was that flowed in streams over the world,
leaving wherever it passed, in literature and art,
in pictures of flowers or mountains, in fables and
poems and tales, the trace of its warm and humanising
flood. Still, there is the other Buddhism, the Buddhism of
the thinker ; his theory of human Ufe, its value and
purpose. And it was this that filled my mind later as
I sat on the summit next to a solemn Buddha against
the setting sun. For a long time I was silent, medi
tating his doctrine. Then I spoke of children, and he
said, "They grow old." I spoke of strong men, and
[44]

THE BUDDHA AT BURUPUDUR
he said, "They grow weak." I spoke of their work
and achievement, and he said, " They die." The stars
came out, and I spoke of eternal law. He said, " One
law concerns you — that which binds you to the wheel
of life." The moon rose, and I spoke of beauty. He
said, " There is one beauty — that of a soul redeemed
from desire." Thereupon the West stirred in me, and'
cried " No ! " " Desire," it said, " is the heart and
essence of the world. It needs not and craves not
extinction. It needs and craves perfection. Youth
passes ; strength passes ; life passes. Yes ! What
of it ? We have access to the youth, the strength, the
life of the world. Man is born to sorrow. Yes ! But
he feels it as tragedy and redeems it. Not round life,
not outside life, but through life is the way. Desire
more and more intense, because more and more pure ;
not peace, but the plenitude of experience. Your
foundation was false. You thought man wanted rest.
He does not. We at least do not, we of the West.
We want more labour ; we want more stress ; we want
more passion. Pain we accept, for it stings us into
life. Strife we accept, for it hardens us to strength
We beUeve in action ; we believe in desire. And we
beUeve that by them we shall attain." So the West
broke out in me ; and I looked at him to see if he was
moved. But the calm eye was untroubled, unruffled
the majestic brow, unperplexed the sweet, solemn
mouth. Secure in his Nirvana, he heard or he
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APPEARANCES
heard me not. He had attained the life-in-death
he sought. But I, I had not attained the life in
life. Unhelped by him, I must go my way. The
East, perhaps, he had understood. He had not
understood the West.

[46]

XI
A MALAY THEATRE
It seems to be a principle among shipping companies
so to arrange their connections that the traveller should
be compeUed to spend some days in Singapore. We
evaded this necessity by taking a trip to Sumatra, but
even so a day and a night remained to be disposed of.
We devoted the morning to a bathe and a lunch at the
Sea View Hotel, and the afternoon to the Botanical
Gardens, where the most attractive flowers are the
children and the most interesting gardeners their
Chinese nurses. There remained the evening, and we
asked about amusements. There was a bioscope, of
course ; there is always a bioscope ; we had found one
even in the tiny town of Medan, in Sumatra. There
was also an opera company, performing the " Pink
Girl." We seemed to know all about her without going
to see her. Was there nothing else ? Yes ; a Malay
theatre. That sounded attractive. So we took the
tram through the Chinese quarter, among the "Ah
Sins " and " Hup Chows," where every one was either
a tailor or^a washerman, and got down at a row of red
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lights. This was the Alexandra Hall, and a bill in
formed us that the performers were the Straits Opera
Company. This dismayed us a little. Still, we paid
our doUars, and entered a dingy, dirty room, with a
few Malays occupying the back benches and a small
group of Chinese women and children in either balcony.
We took our seats with half a dozen coloured aristo
crats in the front rows, and looked about us. We were
the only Europeans. But, to console us in our isolation,
on either side of the proscenium was painted a couple
of Italians in the act of embracing as one only embraces
in opera. We glanced at our programme and saw that
the play was the " Moon Princess," and that Afrid, a
genie, figured in the cast. It was then, at least, Oriental,
though it could hardly be Malay, and our spirits rose.
But the orchestra quickly damped them ; there was a
piano, a violin, a 'cello, a clarionet, and a cornet, and
from beginning to end of the performance they were
never in tune with themselves or with the singers. And
the music ? It was sometimes Italian, sometimes
Spanish, never, as far as I could detect, Oriental, and
always thoroughly and frankly bad.
No matter ! The curtain rose and displayed a garden.
The Prince entered. He was dressed in mediaeval
Italian costume (a style of dress, be it said once for all,
which was adopted by the whole company). With
gestures of ecstatic astonishment he applied his nose
to the paper roses. Then he advanced and appeared
[48]

A MALAY THEATRE
to sing, for his mouth moved; but the orchestra
drowned any notes he may have emitted. The song
finished, he lay down upon a couch and slept. Where
upon there entered an ugly little girl, in a short white
frock and black stockings and ribbons, with an expres
sion of fixed gloom upon her face, and began to move
her feet and arms in a parody of Oriental dancing. We
thought at first that she was the Moon Princess, and
felt a pang of disappointment. But she turned out to
be the Spirit of Dreams ; and presently she ushered
in the real Princess, with whom, on the spot, the Prince,
unlike ourselves, became violently enamoured. She
vanished, and he woke to find her a vision. Despair of
the Prince ; despair of the King ; despair of the Queen,
not unmixed with rage, to judge from her voice and
gestures. Consultation of an astrologer. Flight of the
Prince in search of his beloved. Universal bewilder
ment and incompetence, such as may be witnessed any
day in the East when anything happens at aU out of
the ordinary way. At this point enter the comic relief,
in the form of woodcutters. I am incUned to suppose,
from the delight of the audience, that there was some
thing genuine here. But whatever it was we were
unable to foUow it. Eventually the woodcutters met
Afrid, whether by chance or design I could not dis
cover. At any rate, their reception was rough. To
borrow the words of the synopsis, " a big fight arose and
they were thrown to space " ; but not till they had
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APPEARANCES
been pulled by the hair and ears, throttled and pum-
melled, to the general satisfaction, for something like
half an hour.
The next scenes were equally vigorous. The synopsis
describes them thus : " Several young princes went to
Genie Janar, the father of the Moon Princess, to demand
her in marriage. Afrid, a genie, met the princes, and,
after having a row, they were aU thrown away." The
row was peculiar. Afrid took them on one by one.
The combatants walked round one another, back to back,
making feints in the air. Then the Prince got a blow
in, which Afrid pretended to feel. But suddenly, with
a hoarse laugh, he rushed again upon the foe, seized
him by the throat or the arm, and (I cannot improve on
the phrase) " threw him away." After all four princes
were thus disposed of I left, being assured of a happy
ending by the account of the concluding scene : " The
Prince then took the Moon Princess to his father's
kingdom, where he was married to her amidst great
rejoicings." Comment perhaps is superfluous. But as I went
home in my rickshaw my mind went back to those
evenings in India when I had seen Indian boys perform
to Indian music dances and plays in honour of Krishna,
and to the Bengal viUage where the assembled inhabi
tants had sung us hymns composed by their native
saint. And I remembered that everywhere, in Egypt,
in India, in Java, in Sumatra, in Japan, the gramo-
[50]

A MALAY THEATRE
phone has made its way ; that an inferior kind of
harmonium is displacing the native instruments; and
that the bioscope — that great instrument of education —
is famiUarising the peasants of the East with aU that
is most vulgar and most shoddy in the humour and
sentiment of the West.
The Westernising of the East must come, no doubt,
and ought to come. But in the process what by
products of waste, or worse ! Once, surely, there must
have been a genuine " Malay theatre." This is what
Europe has made of it.

[51]

PART II
CHINA

I
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA
Some recent traveUers have expressed disappointment
or even disgust with what they saw or learned or guessed
of China. My own first impression is quite contrary.
The climate, it is true, for the moment, inclines one to
gloomy views. An icy wind, a black sky, a cold drizzle.
March in England could hardly do worse. But in
Canton one almost forgets all that. Imagine a maze
of narrow streets, more confused and confusing than
Venice ; high houses (except in the old city) ; and
hanging parallel to these, in long, vertical Unes, flags
and wooden signs inscribed with huge Chinese char
acters, gold on black, gold on red, red or blue on white,
a blaze of colour ; and under it, pouring in a ceaseless
stream, yeUow faces, black heads, blue jackets and
trousers, all on foot or borne on chairs, not a cart
or carriage, rarely a pony, nobody crowding, nobody
hustUng or jostUng, an even flow of cheerful humanity,
inexhaustible, imperturbable, convincing one at first
sight of the truth of aU one has heard of the order,
independence, and vigour of this extraordinary people.
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The shops are high and spacious, level with the street,
not, as in India, raised on Uttle platforms ; and com
monly, within, they are cut across by a kind of arch
elaborately carved and blazing with gold. Every trade
may be seen plying — jade-cutters, cloth-rouers, weavers,
ring-makers, rice-pounders, a thousand others. Whole
animals, roasted, hang before the butchers' shops,
ducks, pigs — even we saw a skinned tiger ! The in
terest is inexhaustible ; and one is lucky if one does not
return with a light purse and a heavy burden of forged
curios. Even the American tourist, so painfuUy in
evidence at the hotel, is lost, drowned in this native
sea. He passes in his chair ; but, Uke oneself, he is
only a drop in the ocean. Canton is China, as Benares
is India. And that conjunction of ideas set me thinking.
To come from India to China is Uke waking from a
dream. Often in India I felt that I was in an enchanted
land. Melancholy, monotony, austerity ; a sense as of
perennial frost, spite of the Ught and heat ; a lost region
peopled with visionary forms ; a purgatory of souls
doing penance till the hour of deUverance shall strike ;
a Umbo, lovely but phantasmal, unearthly, over-earthly
— that is the kind of impression India left on my mind.
I reach China, awake, and rub my eyes. This, of course,
is the real world. This is every-day. Good temper,
industry, inteUigence. Nothing abnormal or over
strained. The natural man, working, marrying, be
getting and rearing children, growing middle-aged,
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FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA
growing old, dying— and that is aU. Here it is broad
daylight; but in India, moon or stars, or a subtler
gleam from some higher heaven. Recall, for example,
Benares — the fantastic buildings rising and faUing Uke
a sea, the stairs running up to infinity, the sacred river,
the sages meditating on its banks, the sacrificial ab
lutions, the squeaUng temple-pipes, and, in the midst
of this, columns of smoke, as the body returns to the
elements and the soul to God. This way of disposing
of the dead, when the first shock is over, Ungers in the
mind as something eminently reUgious. Death and
dissolution take place in the midst of life, for death is
no more a mystery than life. In the open air, in the
press of men, the soul takes flight. She is no stranger,
for everything is soul — houses, trees, men, the elements
into which the body is resolved. Death is not annihila
tion, it is change of form ; and through all changes of
form the essence persists.
But now turn back to Canton. We pass the shops
of the coffin-makers. We Unger. But " No stop,"
says our guide ; " better coffins soon." " Soon " is
what the guide-books caU the " City of the Dead." A
number of little chapels ; and laid in each a great
lacquered coffin in which the dead man Uves. I say
" Uves " advisedly, for there is set for his use a table
and a chair, and every morning he is provided with a cup
of tea. A bunch of paper, yeUow and white, symboUses
his money ; and perhaps a couple of figures represent
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attendants. There he Uves, quite simply and naturally
as he had always Uved, until the proper time and place
is discovered in which he may be buried. It may be
months, it may be, or rather, might have been, years ; for
I am told that a reforming Government has limited the
time to six months. And after burial ? Why, presum
ably he Uves still. But not with the Ufe of the universal
soul. Oh no ! There have been mystics in China, but
the Chinese are not mystical. What he was he stiU is,
an eating and drinking creature, and, one might even
conjecture, a snob. For if one visits the family chapel
of the Changs — another of the sights of Canton— one
sees ranged round the walls hundreds of little tablets,
painted green and inscribed in gold. These are the
memorials of the deceased. And they are arranged in
three classes, those who pay most being in the first
and those who pay least in the third. One can even
reserve one's place — first, second, or third — while one
is stiU aUve, by a white tablet. You die, and the green
is substituted. And so, while you yet five, you may
secure your social status after death. How — how
British 1 Yes, the word is out ; and I venture to record
a suspicion that has long been maturing in my mind.
The Chinese are not only Western ; among the Western
they are English. Their minds move as ours do ; they
are practical, sensible, reasonable. And that is why —
as it would seem — they have more sympathy with
Englishmen, if not with the English Government, than
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FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA
with any other Westerners. East may be East and
West West, though I very much doubt it. But if
there be any truth in the aphorism, we must define our
terms. The East must be confined to India, and China
included in the West. That as a preUminary correction.
I say nothing yet about Japan. But I shall have more
to say, I hope, about China.

[59]

II
NANKING
The Chinese, one is stiU told, cannot and will not
change. On the other hand, Professor Ross writes a
book entitled The Changing Chinese. And anyone may
see that the Chinese educated abroad are transformed,
at any rate externaUy, out of aU recognition. In
Canton I met some of the officials of the new Govern
ment ; and found them, to the outward sense, pure
Americans. The dress, the manners, the accent, the
inteUectual outfit — all complete ! Whether, in some
mysterious sense, they remain Chinese at the core I do
not presume to affirm or deny. But an external trans
formation so complete must imply some inward change.
Foreign residents in China deplore the foreign-educated
product. I have met some who almost gnash their
teeth at " young China." But this seems rather hard
on China. For nearly a century foreigners have been
exhorting her, at the point of the bayonet, to adopt
Western ways and Western ideas. And when she
begins to do so, the same people turn round and accuse
her of unpardonable levity, and treachery to her own
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NANKING
traditions. What do foreigners want ? the Chinese
may weU ask. I am afraid the true answer is, that they
want nothing but concessions, interest on loans, and
trade profits, at all and every cost to China.
But I must not deviate into politics. What suggested
this train of thought was the student-guide supplied
me at Nanking by the American missionary college.
There he was, complete American ; and, I fear I must
add, boring as only Americans can bore. Still, he
showed me Nanking, and Nanking is worth seeing,
though the interest of it is somewhat tragic. A waU
20 to 40 feet thick, 40 to 90 feet high, and 22 miles in
circuit (I take these figures on trust) encloses an area
larger than that of any other Chinese city. But the
greater part of this area is fields and ruins. You pass
through the city gate in the train, and find yourself
in the country. You alight, and you are stiU in the
country. A carriage takes you, in time, to the squalid
village, or series of villages, where are housed the 350,000
inhabitants of modern Nanking. Among them are
quartered the khaki-clad soldiers of new China, the new
national flag draped at the gate of their barracks.
Meantime old China swarms, unregenerate, in the narrow
little streets, chaffering, chattering, laughing in its rags
as though there had never been a siege, a surrender,
and a revolution. Beggars display their stumps and
their sores, grovelling on the ground like brutes. Ragged
children run for miles beside the carriage, singing for
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alms ; and stop at last, laughing, as though it had been
a good joke to run so far and get nothing for it. One
monument in aU this scene of squalor arrests attention
— the now disused examination hall. It is a kind of
rabbit-warren of tiny cells, six feet deep, four feet
broad, and six feet high ; row upon row of them, opening
on narrow unroofed corridors; no doors now, nor, I
should suppose, at any time, for it would be impossible
to breathe in these boxes if they had Uds. Here, for a
week or a fortnight, the candidates sat and excogitated,
unable to lie down at night, sleeping, if they could, in
their chairs. And no wonder if, every now and again,
one of them incontinently died and was hauled out, a
corpse, through a hole in the waU ; or went mad and ran
amuck among examiners and examinees. For centuries,
as is well known, this system selected the rulers of China ;
and whole lives, from boyhood to extreme old age, were
spent in preparing for the examinations. Now aU this
is abolished ; and some people appear to regret it.
Once more, what do the foreigners want ?
The old imperial city, where once the Ming dynasty
reigned, was destroyed in the Taiping RebeUion. The
Tartar city, where before the revolution 3000 mandarins
lived on their pensions, was burnt in the siege of 1911.
Of these cities nothing remains but their huge walls and
gates and the ruins of their houses. The principal
interest of Nanking, the so-called " Ming tombs," Ues
outside the walls. And the interest is not the tombs
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NANKING
but the road to them. It is lined by huge figures carved
out of monoliths. Brutes first — lions, camels, elephants,
horses, a pair of each lying down and a pair standing ;
then human figures, military and civil officers. What
they symboUse I cannot teU. They are said to guard
the road. And very impressive they are in the solitude.
Not so what they lead to, which is merely a hiU, artificial,
I suppose, piled on a foundation of stone. Once, my
guide informed me, there was a door giving admission ;
and within, a complete house, with all its furniture,
in stone. But the door is sealed, and for centuries
no one has explored the interior. I suggested excava
tion, but was told the superstition of the inhabitants
forbade it. " Besides," said my guide, " the Chinese
are not curious." I wonder ? Whether or no they are
curious, they are certainly superstitious. Apropos, a
gunboat ran aground on the Yangtse. The river was
faUing, and there seemed no chance of getting off for
months. The officers made up their minds to it, and
fraternised with the priest of a temple on the bank. The
priest one day asked for a photograph of the boat.
They gave him one, and he asked them to dinner. After
dinner he solemnly burnt the photograph to his god.
And — " would you believe it ? " — next day a freshet
came down and set the vessel afloat. Which shows
how superstitions are generated and maintained in a
world so Uttle subject to law, on the surface of it, as
ours.
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My anecdote has brought me to the Yangtse, and it is
on a river-boat that I write. Hour after hour there
passes by the panorama of hiUs and plain, of green
wheat and yeUow rape, of the great flood with its flocks
of wild duck, of fishers' cabins on the shore and mud-
built thatched huts, of junks with bamboo-threaded
sails skimming on flat bottoms, of high cliffs with
monasteries perched on perilous ledges, of changing
fight and shade, of burning sunset and the stars.
TraveUing by river is the best of aU travelling — smooth,
slow, quiet, and soothingly contemplative. AU China,
I am informed by some pessimists, is in a state of
anarchy, actual or latent. It may be. But it is difficult
to beUeve it among these primitive industrious people
living and working as they have lived and worked for
4000 years. Any other country, I suppose, in such a
crisis as the present would be seething with civil war.
But China ? When one puts the point to the foreigner
who has been talking of anarchy he says, " Ah ! but the
Chinese are so peaceable ! They don't mind whether
there's a Government or no. They just go on without
it ! " Exactly ! That is the wonderful thing. But even
that seems to annoy the foreigner. Once more, what
does he want ? I give it up.

[64]

Ill
IN THE YANGTSE GORGES
At the upper end of the gorge poeticaUy named " Ox
Liver and Horse Lungs " I watched the steamboat
smoking and splashing up stream. She had traversed
in a few hours the distance I, in my houseboat, had
taken three days to cover ; and certainly she is much
more convenient and much more comfortable. That,
however, is not necessarily an advantage. What may
be urged with some force is that traveUing by steamboat
is more humane. It dispenses with human labour of
a peculiarly dangerous and strenuous kind. Twenty-
eight boatmen are attached to my single person. A big
junk may have a crew of two hundred. When the wind
is not fair they must row or tow ; and towing is not
like towing along the Thames ! Suddenly you see the
men leap out and swarm up a precipice. Presently
they appear high above, creeping with the line along a
ledge of rock. And your " boy " remarks nonchalantly,
" Plenty coolie fall here. Too high place." Or they are
clambering over boulders, one or two told off to dis
entangle the Une wherever it catches. Or they are
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struggling along a greasy slope, their bare feet gripping
the mud, hardly able to advance a step or even to hold
their own. As a labour-saving machine one must
welcome the advent of the steamboat, as one is con
strained to welcome even that of the motor-omnibus.
But from the traveUer's point of view it is different.
Railways and steamboats enable more of us to travel,
and to travel farther, in space. But in experience he
travels the farthest who travels the slowest. A mediaeval
student or apprentice walking through Europe on foot
really did see the world. A modern tourist sees nothing
but the inside of hotels. Unless, that is, he chooses to
walk, or ride, or even cycle. Then it is different. Then
he begins to see. As now I, from my houseboat, begin
to see China. Not profoundly, of course, but some
how intimately. For instance, while my crew eat their
midday rice, I stroU up to the neighbouring viUage.
Contrary to aU I have been taught to expect, I find it
charming, picturesque, not so dirty after aU, not so
squalid, not so poor. The people, too, who, one thought,
would insult or mob the foreigner, either take no
notice, or, if you greet them, respond in the friendliest
way. They may, of course, be explaining to one
another that you are a foreign devil, but nothing in
their countenance or manner suggests it. The chil
dren are far better-mannered than in most European
countries. They may follow you, and chatter and
laugh ; but at least they have not learnt to beg.
[66]

IN THE YANGTSE GORGES
Curiosity they have, and gaiety, but I detect no sign
of hostility. I walk down the long street, with its
shops and roomy houses — far roomier and more pros
perous-looking than in most Indian viUages — and come
to the temple. Smilingly I am invited to enter. There
are no mysteries in Chinese religion. I begin to wonder,
indeed, whether there is any religion left. For everywhere
I find the temples and monasteries either deserted or
turned into schools or barracks. This one is deserted.
It is like a series of lumber-rooms, fuU of dusty idols.
The idols were once gaudy, brightly painted " to look
like Ufe," with beards and whiskers of real hair. But
now their splendour is dimmed. The demons scowl
to no purpose. To no purpose the dragons coil. No
trespasser threatens the god behind his dingy cur
tains. In one chamber only a priest kneels before the
shrine and chants out of a book while he taps a bronze
vessel with a little hammer. Else, solitude, vacuity,
and silence. Is he Buddhist or Taoist ? I have no
language in which to ask. I can only accept with
mute gestures the dusty seat he offers and the cup of
lukewarm tea. What has happened to religion ? So
far as I can make out, something like the " disestablish
ment of the Church." The RepubUc has been at work ;
and in the next viUage I see what it has been doing.
For there the temple is converted into a school. De
lightedly the scholars show me round. On the outside
wall, for him who runs to read, are scored up long
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addition sums in our Western figures. Inside, the
wans are hung with drawings of birds and beasts,
of the human skeleton and organs, even of bacteria !
There are maps of China and of the world. The children
even produce in triumph an English reading-book, though
I must confess they do not seem to have profited by
it much. StiU, they can say " cat " when you show
them a picture of the creature; which is more than I
could do in Chinese. And China does not change ?
Wait a generation ! This, remember, is a tiny vfllage
in the heart of the country, more than iooo miles from
the coast. And this is happening aU over the Celestial
Empire, I suppose. I start to return to my boat, but
have not gone a quarter of a mile before I hear a shout,
and looking back find half the school foUowing me and
escorting their teacher, who speaks English. He
regrets to have missed my visit ; wiU I not return
and let him show me the school ? I excuse myself,
and he walks with me to the boat, making what con
versation he can. One remark I remember — " China a
good place now ; China a republic." And I thought, as
we exchanged cards, that he represented the Republic
more essentiaUy than the politicians whom foreigners
so severely criticise. Anyhow, Republic or no, China
is being transformed. And there is something other
than steamboats to attest it.
Which brings me back to my starting-point. On the
steamboat you have no adventures. But on the house-
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IN THE YANGTSE GORGES
boat you do. For instance, the other day the rope
broke as we were towing up a rapid, and down we
dashed, turning round and round, and annihilating
in five minutes the labour of an hour. I was afraid, I
confess ; but the boatmen took it as a matter of course.
In some way, incomprehensible to me, they got us into
the bank, and, looking up, the first thing I saw was
an embankment in construction — the railway from
Ichang to Chungking. When it is finished we shall go
by train — not even by steamboat, — and so see nothing
except tunnels. Certainly, we shaU not be compelled
to pass the night in a smaU viUage ; nor permitted to
see the sunset behind these lovely hiUs and the moon
rising over the river between the cliffs of the gorge.
Nor shall we then be delayed, as I was yesterday, till
the water should run down, and so tempted to walk
into the country. I made for a side vaUey, forded a
red torrent, and found myself among fields and orchards ;
green of mulberries, green of fruit trees, green of young
corn ; and above, the purple hiUs, with aU their bony
structure showing under the skin of soil. I foUowed
a high path, greeted by the peasants I met with a
charming smile and that delightful gesture whereby,
instead of shaking your hand, they clasp theirs and
shake them at you. I came at last to a solitary place,
and, sitting down there, watched the evening light on
the mountains. I watched, and they seemed to be
saying something. What ?
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" Rocks that are bones, earth that is flesh, what, what do you
mean
Eyeing me silently ?
Streams that are voices, what, what do you say?
You are pouring an ocean into a cup. Yet pour, that all it
can hold
May at least be water of yours."
At dusk I got back to the river, and found that a wind
had ^sprung up and the junks were trying to pass the
rapid. There must have been fifty of them crowded
together. They could only pass one by one ; and the
scene was pandemonium. The Chinese are even noisier
than the Italians, and present the same appearance of
confusion. But in some mysterious way an order is
always getting evolved. On this occasion it seemed
to be perfectly understood which boat should go first.
And presently there she was, in mid-rapid, apparently
not advancing an inch, the ropes held taut from a cause
way a quarter of a mile off. At last the strain suddenly
ceased, and she moved quickly up stream. Another
foUowed. Then it was dark. And we had to pass the
night, after aU, tossing uneasily in the rough water.
Soon after dawn we started again. I went across to the
causeway, and watched the trackers at work — twenty
each on two ropes, hardly advancing a step in five
minutes. Then the boat's head swung into shore, the
tension ceased ; something had happened. I waited
half an hour or so. " Nothing doing," in the expres
sive American phrase. Then I went back. We had
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IN THE YANGTSE GORGES
sprung a leak, and my cabin was converted into a
swimming-bath. Another hour or so repairing this.
Then the rope had to be brought back and attached
again. At last we started for the second time, and in
half an hour got safely through the hundred yards of
racing waters into the bank above. At ten I got my
breakfast, and we started to sail with a fair wind. It
dropped. Rain came on. My crew (as always in that
conjuncture) put up their awning and struck work.
So here we are at i p.m., in a heavy thunder-shower,
a mile from the place we tried to leave at six o'clock
this morning. This is the ancient method of travelling
— four thousand years old, I suppose. It is very in
convenient 1 Oh, yes — BUT ! 

L7*]

IV
PEKIN
Professor Giles tells us, no doubt truly, that the
Chinese are not a religious nation. No nation, I think,
ever was, unless it be the Indians. But religious
impulses sweep over nations and pass away, leaving
deposits — rituals, priesthoods, and temples. Such an
impulse once swept over China, in the form of Budd
hism ; and I am now visiting its deposit in the neigh
bourhood of Pekin. Scattered over the hills to the
west of the city are a number of monastery temples.
Some are deserted ; some are let as viUas to Europeans ;
some, like the one where I am staying, have stiU their
complement of monks — in this temple, I am told, some
three to four hundred. But neither here nor anywhere
have I seen anything that suggests vitality in the re
ligion. I entered one of the temples yesterday at dusk
and watched the monks chanting and processing round
a shrine from which loomed in the shadow a gigantic
bronze-gold Buddha. They began to giggle like chil
dren at the entrance of the foreigner and never took
their eyes off us. Later, individual monks came running
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PEKIN
round the shrines, beating a gong as though to caU
the attention of the deity, and shouting a few words of
perfunctory praise or prayer. Irreverence more com
plete I have not seen even in Italy, nor beggary more
shameless. Such is the latter end of the gospel of
Buddha in China. It seems better that he should sit
deserted in his Indian caves than be dishonoured by
such mummeries.
But once it must have been otherwise. Once this
religion was alive. And then it was that men chose
these exquisite sites for contemplation. The Chinese
Buddhists had clearly the same sense for the beauty of
nature that the Italian Franciscans had. In secluded
woods and copses their temples nestle, courts and
terraces commanding superb views over the great
plain to Pekin. The architecture is delicate and
lovely ; tiled roofs, green or gold or grey, cornices
elaborately carved and painted in lovely harmonies of
blue and green ; fine trees religiously preserved ; the
whole building so planned and set as to enhance, not
destroy, the lines and colour of the landscape. To
wander from one of these temples to another, to rest
in them in the heat of the day and sleep in them at
night, is to taste a form of travel impossible in Europe
now, though familiar enough there in the Middle Ages.
SpeciaUy delightful is it to come at dusk upon a temple
apparently deserted ; to hear the beU tinkle as the
wind moves it ; to enter a dusky hall and start to see
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in a dark recess huge figures, fierce faces, glimmering
maces and swords that seem to threaten the impious
intruder. This morning there was a festival, and the people
from the country crowded into the temple. Very bright
and gay they looked in their gala clothes. The women
especially were charming ; painted, it is true, but
painted quite frankly, to better nature, not to imitate
her. Their cheeks were like peaches or apples, and
their dresses correspondingly gay. Why they had
come did not appear ; not, apparently, to worship, for
their mood was anything but religious. Some perhaps
came to carry away a little porcelain boy or girl as
guarantee of a baby to come. For the Chinese, by
appropriate rites, can determine the sex of a child —
a secret unknown as yet to the doctors of Europe !
Some, perhaps, came to cure their eyes, and will leave
at the shrine a picture on linen of the organs affected.
Some are merely there for a jaunt, to see the sights and
the country. We saw a group on their way home,
climbing a steep hill for no apparent purpose except to
look at the view. What English agricultural labourer
would do as much ? But the Chinese are not " agri
cultural labourers"; they are independent peasants;
and a people so gay, so friendly, so well-mannered and
self-respecting I have found nowhere else in the world.
The country round Pekin has the beauty we associate
with Italy. First the plain, with its fresh spring green,
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PEKIN
its dusty paths, its grey and orange viUages, its cypress
groves, its pagodas, its memorial slabs. Then the
hills, swimming in amethyst, bare as those of Umbria,
fine and clean in colour and form. For this beauty I
was unprepared. I have even read that there is no
natural beauty in China. And I was unprepared for
Pekin too. How can I describe it ? At this time of
year, seen from above, it is like an immense green park.
You mount the tremendous waU, 40 feet high, 14 miles
round, as broad at the top as a London street, and you
look over a sea of spring-green tree-tops, from which
emerge the orange-gold roofs of palaces and temples.
You descend, and find the great roads laid out by
Kubla Khan, running north and south, east and west,
and thick, as the case may be, with dust or mud ; and
opening out of them a maze of streets and lanes, one-
storeyed houses, grey waUs and roofs, shop fronts aU
ablaze with gilt carving, aU trades plying, aU goods
seUing, rickshaws, mule-carts canopied with blue,
swarming pedestrians, eight hundred thousand people
scurrying like ants in this gigantic framework of Cyclo
pean waUs and gates. Never was a medley of greatness
and squalor more strange and impressive. One quarter
only is commonplace, that of the Legations. There is
the Wagon-lits Hotel, with its cosmopolitan stream of
Chinese poUticians, European tourists, concession-
hunters, and the like. There are the Americans,
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occupying and guarding the great north gate, and
playing basebaU in its precincts. There are the
Germans, the Dutch, the French, the Italians, the
Russians, the Japanese ; and there, in a magnificent
Chinese palace, are the British, girt by that famous waU
of the siege on which they have characteristicaUy
written " Lest we forget ! " Forget what ? The one
or two children who died in the Legation, and the
one or two men who were killed ? Or the wholesale
massacre, robbery, and devastation which foUowed
when the siege was relieved ? This latter, I fear, the
Chinese are not likely to forget soon. Yet it would
be better if they could. And better if the Europeans
could remember much that they forget — could remem
ber that they forced their presence and their trade on
China against her wiU ; that their treaties were extorted
by force, and their loans imposed by force, since they
exacted from China what are ironically caUed " indem
nities " which she could not pay except by borrowing
from those who were robbing her. If Europeans could
remember and realise these facts they would perhaps
cease to complain that China continues to evade their
demands by the only weapon of the weak — cunning.
When you have knocked a man down, trampled on him,
and picked his pocket, you can hardly expect him to
enter into social relations with you merely because you
pick him up and, retaining his property, propose that
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PEKIN
you should now be friends and begin to do business.
The obUquity of vision of the European residents on
aU these points is extraordinary. They cannot see
that wrong has been done, and that wrong engenders
wrong. They repeat comfortable formulae about the
duplicity and evasiveness of the Chinese ; they charge
them with dishonesty at the very moment that they
are dismembering their country ; they attach intoler
able conditions to their loans, and then complain if
their victims attempt to find accommodation else
where. Of aU the Powers the United States alone have
shown some generosity and fairness, and they are reaping
their reward in the confidence of Young China. The
Americans had the inteUigence to devote some part of
the excessive indemnity they exacted after the Boxer
riots to educating Chinese students in America. Hun
dreds of these young men are now returned to China,
with the friendUest feeling to America, and, naturally,
anxious to develop political and commercial relations
with her rather than with other Powers. British trade
may suffer because British poUcy has been less generous.
But British trade, I suppose, would suffer in any case.
For the British continue to maintain their ignorance
and contempt of China and all things Chinese, while
Germans and Japanese are travelUng and studying
indefatigably aU over the country. " We see too
much of things Chinese ! " was the amazing remark
made to me by a business man in Shanghai. Too
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much ! They se£ nothing at all, and want to see
nothing. They live in the treaty ports, dine, dance,
play tennis, race. China is in birth-throes, and they
know and care nothing. A future in China is hardly
for them.

[78]

V
THE ENGLISHMAN ABROAD
To write from China about the EngUshman may seem an
odd choice. But to see him abroad is to see him afresh.
At home he is the air one breathes ; one is unaware of
his qualities. Against a background of other races you
suddenly perceive him, and can estimate him— fafia-
ciously or no — as you estimate foreigners.
So seen the Englishman appears as the eternal school
boy. I mean no insult ; I mean to express his qualities
as weU as his defects. He has the pluck, the zest,
the sense of fair play, the public spirit of our great
schools. He has also their narrowness and their levity.
Enter his office, and you wiU find him not hurried or
worried, not scheming, skimping, or hustling, but
cheery, genial, detached, with an air of playing at
work. As likely as not, in a quarter of an hour he
wfll have asked you round to the club and offered you
a whisky and soda. Dine with him, and the talk wiU
turn on golf or racing, on shooting, fishing, and the
gymkhana. Or, if you wish to divert it, you must ask
him definite questions about matters of fact. Pro-
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bably you wiU get precise and inteUigent replies. But
if you put a general question he wiU flounder resent
fully ; and if you generalise yourself you wiU see him
dismissing you as a windbag. Of the religion, the
politics, the manners and customs of the country
in which he lives he wiU know and care nothing,
except so far as they may touch his affairs. He
wiU never, if he can help it, leave the limits of the
foreign settlement. Physically he osciUates between
his home, his office, the club, and the racecourse ;
mentaUy, between his business and sport. On aU
general topics his opinions are second or third hand.
They are the ghosts of old prejudices imported years
ago from England, or taken up unexamined from the
English community abroad. And these opinions pass
from hand to hand till they are as similar as pebbles
on the shore. In an hour or so you wiU have acquired
the whole stock of ideas current in the foreign com
munity throughout a continent. Your only hope of new
light is in particular instances and iUustrations. And
these, of course, may be had for the asking.
But the Englishman abroad in some points is the
Englishman at his best. For he is or has been a pioneer,
at any rate in China. And pioneering brings out his
most characteristic qualities. He loves to decide every
thing on his own judgment, on the spur of the moment,
directly on the immediate fact, and in disregard of re
moter contingencies and possibilities. He needs adven-
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THE ENGLISHMAN ABROAD
ture to bring out his powers, and only reaUy takes to
business when business is something of a " lark." To
combine the functions of a trader with those of an
explorer, a soldier, and a diplomat is what he reaUy
enjoys. So, aU over the world, he opens the ways, and
others come in to reap the fruit of his labours. This is
true in things inteUectual as in things practical. In
science, too, he is a pioneer. Modern archaeology was
founded by English traveUers. Darwin and Wallace
and Galton in their youth pursued adventure as much
as knowledge. When the era of routine arrives, when
laboratory work succeeds to field work, the Englishman
is apt to retire and leave the job to the German. The
Englishman, one might say, " larks " into achievement,
the German " grinds " into it. The one, accordingly,
is free-living, genial, generous, careless ; the other
laborious, exact, routine-ridden. It is hard for an
Englishman to be a pedant ; it is not easy for a German
to be anything else. For philosophy no man has less
capacity than the Englishman. He does not under
stand even how such questions can be put, stiU less how
anyone can pretend to answer them. The philosopher
wants to know whether, how, and why life ought to
be lived before he wiU consent to live it. The English
man just lives ahead, not aware that there is a problem ;
or convinced that, if there is one, it wUl only be solved
" by walking." The philosopher proceeds from the
abstract to the concrete. The Englishman starts with
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the concrete, and may or, more probably, may not
arrive at the abstract. No general rules are of any use
to him except such as he may have elaborated for him
self out of his own experience. That is why he mis
trusts education. For education teaches how to think
in general, and that isn't what he wants or believes in.
So, when he gets into affairs, he discards all his training
and starts again at the beginning, learning to think,
if he ever does learn it, over his own particular job.
And his own way, he opines, must be the right way for
every one. Hence his contempt and even indignation
for individuals or nations who are moved by " ideas."
At this moment his annoyance with the leaders of
" Young China " is provoked largely by the fact that
they are proceeding on general notions of how a nation
should be governed and organised, instead of starting
with the particularities of their own society, and trying
to mend it piece by piece and from hand to mouth.
Before they make a Constitution, he thinks, they ought
to make roads ; and before they draw up codes, to
extirpate consumption. The conclusion lies near at
hand, and I have heard it drawn — " What they want is
a few centuries of British rule." And, indeed, it is curious
how constantly the EngUshman abroad is opposed, in
the case of other nations, to aU the institutions and
principles he is supposed to be proud of at home.
Partly, no doubt, this is due to his secret or avowed
belief that the whole world ought to be governed despoti-
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THE ENGLISHMAN ABROAD
caUy by the English. But partly it is because he does
not believe that the results the English have achieved
can be achieved in any other way than theirs. They
arrived at them without intention or foresight, by a series
of detached steps, each taken without prescience of the
one that would follow. So, and so only, can other
nations arrive at them. He does not believe in short
cuts, nor in learning by the experience of others. And
so the watchwords " Liberty," " Justice," " Constitu
tion," so dear to him at home, leave him cold abroad.
Or, rather, they make him very warm, but warm not
with zeal but with irritation.
Never was such a pourer of cold water on other
people's enthusiasms. He cannot endure the profes
sion that a man is moved by high motives. His annoy
ance, for example, with the " anti-opium " movement
is not due to the fact that he supports the importation
into China of Indian opium. Very commonly he does not.
But the movement is an " agitation " (dreadful word !).
It is " got up " by missionaries. It purports to be
based on moral grounds, and he suspects everything
that so purports. Not that he is not himself moved by
moral considerations. Almost invariably he is. But he
wiU never admit it for himself, and he deeply suspects
it in others. The words " hypocrite," *' humbug,"
" sentimentalist " spring readily to his lips. But let
him work off his steam, sit quiet and wait, and you will
find, often enough, that he has arrived at the same
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conclusion as the " sentimentalist " — only, of course,
for quite different reasons ! For inteUect he has little
use, except so far as it issues in practical results. He
wiU forgive a man for being inteUigent if he makes a
fortune, but hardly otherwise. Still, he has a queer,
half-contemptuous admiration for a definite inteUectual
accomplishment which he knows it is hard to acquire
and is not sure he could acquire himself. That, for
instance, is his attitude to those who know Chinese. A
" sinologue," he wiU tell you, must be an imbecile, for
no one but a fool would give so much time to a study
so unprofitable. StiU, in a way, he is proud of the
sinologue — as a public school is proud of a boy so clever
as to verge upon insanity, or a viUage is proud of the
viUage idiot. Something of the same feeling, I some
times think, underlies his respect for Shakspere. " If
you want that kind of thing," he seems to say to the
foreigner, " and it's the kind of thing you would want,
we can do it, you see, better than you can ! "
So with art. He is never a connoisseur, but he is
often a coUector. Partly, no doubt, because there is
money in it, but that is a secondary consideration.
Mainly because coUecting and coUectors appeal to his
sporting instinct. His knowledge about his coUection
will be precise and definite, whether it be postage stamps
or pictures. He wiU know aU about it, except its
aesthetic value. That he cannot know, for he cannot
see it. He has the flair of the dealer, not the perception
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THE ENGLISHMAN ABROAD
of the amateur. And he does not know or believe that
there is any distinction between them.
But these, from his point of view, are trifles. What
matters is that he has pre-eminently the virtues of
active life. He is fair-minded, and this, oddly, in
spite of his difficulty in seeing another man's point of
view. When he does see it he respects it. Whereas
nimbler-witted nations see it only to circumvent and
cheat it. He is honest ; as honest, at least, as the
conditions of modern business permit. He hates bad
work, even when, for the moment, bad work pays. He
hates skimping and paring. And these qualities of his
make it hard for him to compete with rivals less scrupu
lous and less generous. He is kind-hearted — much more
so than he cares to admit. And at the bottom of aU
his quaUties he has the sense of duty. He wiU shoulder
loyaUy aU the obligations he has undertaken to his
country, to his fanuly, to his employer, to his employees.
The sense of duty, indeed, one might say with truth, is
his religion. For on the rare occasions on which he
can be persuaded to broach such themes you wiU find,
I think, at the bottom of his mind that what he believes
in is Something, somehow, somewhere, in the universe,
which helps him, and which he is helping, when he does
right. There must, he feels, be some sense in life. And
what sense would there be if duty were nonsense ?
Poets, artists, philosophers can never be at home
with the Englishman. His qualities and his defects
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aUke are alien to them. In his company they live as
in prison, for it is not an air in which wings can soar.
But for soUd walking on the ground he has not his equal.
The phrase " Solvitur ambulando " must surely have
been coined for him. And no doubt on his road he
has passed, and wiU pass again, the wrecks of many
a flying-machine.

186]

VI
CHINA IN TRANSITION
The Chinese Revolution has proceeded, so far, with less
disturbance and bloodshed than any great revolution
known to history. There has been little serious fighting
and Uttle serious disorder ; nothing comparable to that
which accompanied, for instance, the French Revolu
tion of 1789. And this, no doubt, is due to the fact
that the Chinese are alone among nations of the earth
in detesting violence and cultivating reason. Their in
stinct is always to compromise and save everybody's
face. And this is the main reason why Westerners despise
them. The Chinese, they aver, have " no guts." And
when hard pressed as to the poUcy of the Western
Powers in China, they wiU sometimes quite frankly
confess that they consider the West has benefited China
by teaching her the use of force. That this should be
the main contribution of Christian to Pagan civflisation
is one of the ironies of history. But it is part of the
greater irony which gave the Christian faith to precisely
those nations whose fundamental instincts and convic
tions were and are in radical antagonism to its teaching,
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Though, however, it is broadly true that the Chinese
have relied on reason and justice in a way and to a
degree which is inconceivable in the West, they have
not been without their share of original sin. Violence,
anarchy, and corruption have played a part in their
history, though a less part than in the history of most
countries. And these forces have been specially evident
in that department to which Westerners are apt to pay
the greatest attention — in the department of govern
ment. Government has always been less important in
China than in the Western world ; it has always been
rudimentary in its organisation; and for centuries it
has been incompetent and corrupt. Of this corruption
Westerners, it is true, make more than they fairly should.
China is no more corrupt (to say the least) than the
United States or Italy or France, or than England was
in the eighteenth century. And much that is caUed
corruption is recognised and established " squeeze,"
necessary; and understood to be necessary, to supplement
the inadequate salaries of officials. A Chinese official is
corrupt much as Lord ChanceUor Bacon was corrupt ;
and whether the ChanceUor ought properly to be caUed
corrupt is stiU matter of controversy. Moreover, the
people have always had their remedy. When the
recognised " squeeze " is exceeded, they protest by
riot. So that the Chinese system, in the most un
favourable view, may be described as corruption tem
pered by anarchy.
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CHINA IN TRANSITION
And this system, it is admitted, stiU prevails after the
Revolution. Clearly, indeed, it cannot be extirpated
until officials are properly paid ; and China is not in a
position to pay for any reform while the Powers are
drawing away an enormous percentage of her resources
by that particular form of robbery caUed by diplo
matists " indemnity." The new officials, then, are
" corrupt " as the old ones were ; and they are some
thing more. They are Jacobins. Educated abroad,
they are as fuU of ideas as was Robespierre or St. Just ;
and their ideas are even more divorced from sentiment
and tradition. A foreign education seems to make a
cut right across a Chinaman's life. He returns with a
new head; and this head never gets into normal rela
tions with his heart. That, I beUeve, is the essence of
Jacobinism, ideas working with enormous rapidity
and freedom unchecked by the fly-wheel of traditional
feelings. And it is Jacobinism that accounts for the
extraordinary vigour of the campaign against opium.
Many Europeans stiU endeavour to maintain that this
campaign is not serious. But that is because Europeans
simply cannot conceive that any body of men should
be in as deadly earnest about a moral issue as are the
representatives of Young China. The anti-opium cam
paign is not only serious, it is ruthless. Smokers are
flogged and executed ; poppy is rooted up ; and farmers
who resist are shot down. The other day in Hunan,
it is credibly reported, some seventy farmers who had
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protested against the destruction of their crops were
locked into a temple and burnt alive. An old man of
seventy-six, falsely accused of growing poppy, was
fined 500 doUars, and when he refused to pay was
flogged to death by the orders of a young official of
twenty-two. Stories of this kind come in from every
part of the country ; and though this or that story may
be untrue or exaggerated, there can be no doubt about
the general state of affairs. The officials are putting
down opium with a vigour and a determination which
it is inconceivable should ever be applied in the West
to the traffic in alcohol. But in doing so they are
showing a ruthlessness which does not seem to be
native to the Chinese, and which perhaps is to be
accounted for by what I have caUed Jacobinism, result
ing from the effects of a Western education that has
been unable to penetrate harmoniously the complicated
structure of Chinese character.
The anti-opium campaign is one example of the way
in which the Revolution has elicited and intensified
violence in this peace-loving people. Another example
is the use of assassination. This has been an accom
paniment of aU great revolutions. It took the form of
" proscriptions " in Rome, of the revolutionary tri
bunals in France. In China it is by comparison a oegU-
gible factor; but it exists. Two months ago a pro
minent leader of the southern party was assassinated ;
and popular suspicion traces the murder to high
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CHINA IN TRANSITION
Government officials, and even to the President himself.
The other day a southern general was kiUed by a bomb.
For the manufacture of bombs is one of the things
China has learned from the Christian West ; and the
President lives in constant terror of this form of murder.
China, it wiU be seen, does not altogether escape the
violence that accompanies aU revolutions. Nor does
she altogether escape the anarchy. Anarchy, indeed,
that is a simple strike against authority, may be said
to be part of the Chinese system. It is the way they
have always enforced their notions of justice. A curious
example has been recently offered by the students of the
Pekin University. For various reasons — good or bad
— they have objected to the conduct of their Chan
ceUor. After ineffectual protests, they caUed upon him
in large numbers with his resignation written out, and
requested him to sign it. He refused; whereupon
they remarked that they would caU again the next day
with revolvers ; and in the interval he saw wisdom
and signed. Last week there was a similar episode.
The new ChanceUor proved as unpalatable as his pre
decessor. The students once more presented them
selves with his resignation written out. He refused to
resign, and, as the students aver, scurrilously abused
them. They proceeded to the Minister of Education,
who refused to see them. Thereupon they camped
out in his courtyard, and stayed aU day and aU night,
sending a message to the professors dated " from xinder
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the trees of the Education Office," to explain that they
were unfortunately unable to attend lectures. This
ChanceUor, too, it would seem, has seen wisdom and
resigned. How strange it aU seems to Western eyes ! A
country, we should suppose, where such things occur,
is incapable of organisation. But it is certain that we
are wrong. Our notion is that everything must be
done by authority, and that unless authority is main
tained there wiU be anarchy. The Chinese notion is
that authority is there to carry out What the people
recognise to be common sense and justice ; if it does
otherwise, it must be resisted ; and if it disappears
Ufe wiU stiU go on — as it is going on now in the greater
part of China — on the basis of the traditional and
essentiaUy reasonable routine. Almost certainly the
students of the University had justice on their side ;
otherwise such action would not be taken ; and when
they get justice they wiU be more docile and orderly than
our own undergraduates at home.
Another thing surprising to European observers is
the apparent belief of the Chinese in verbal remon
strance. Under the present regime officials and public
men are aUowed the free use of the telegraph. The
consequence is that telegrams of advice, admonition,
approval, blame, fear, hope, doubt pour in dafly to the
Government from civfl and miUtary governors, from
members of Parliament and party leaders. In the
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CHINA IN TRANSITION
paper to-day, for example, is a telegram from the
Governors of seventeen provinces addressed to the
National Assembly. It begins as foUows :
" To the President, the Cabinet, the Tsan Yi Yuan,
the Chung Yi Yuan, and the Press Association, — When
the revolution took place at Wuchang, the various
societies and groups responded, and when the RepubUc
was inaugurated the troops raised among these bodies
were graduaUy disbanded. For fear that, being driven
by hunger, these disbanded soldiers would become a
menace to the place, the various societies and groups
have established a society at Shanghai caUed the
Citizens' Progressive Society, to promote the means of
livelihood for the people, and the advancement of
society, and the establishment has been registered in
the offices of the Tutuhs of the provinces."
Then foUows a statement of the " six dangers " to
which the country is exposed, an appeal to the Assembly
to act more reasonably and competently, and then the
foUowing peroration :
" The declarations of us. Yuan-hung and others, are
stiU there, our wounds have not yet been fuUy recovered,
and should the sea and ocean be dried up, our original
hearts wiU not be changed. We wiU protect the RepubUc
with our sinews and blood of brass and iron, we wiU
take the lead of the province, and be their backbone,
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and we wiU not allow the revival of the monarchy and
the suppression of the powers of the people. Let
Heaven and earth be witness to our words. You
gentlemen are piUars of the political parties, or the
representatives of the people, and you should unite
together and not become inconsistent. You first deter
mined that the Loan is necessary, but such opinion
is now changed, and you now reject the Loan. Can the
ice be changed into red coal in your hearts ? Thus
even those who love and admire you will not be able
to defend your position. However, if you have any
extraordinary plan or suggestion to save the present
situation, you can show it to us."
Some of the strange effect produced by this document
is due, no doubt, to translation. But it, like the many
others of the kind I have read, seems to indicate what
is at the root of the Chinese attitude to life — a belief
in the power of reason and persuasion. I have said
enough to show that this attitude does not exclude the
use of violence ; but I feel sure that it limits it far
more than it has ever been limited in Europe. Even
in time of revolution the Chinese are peaceable and
orderly to an extent unknown and almost unbelievable
in the West. And the one thing the West is teaching
them and priding itself on teaching them is the absurdity
of this attitude. WeU, one day it is the West that wul
repent because China has learnt the lesson too well.
[94]

VII
A SACRED MOUNTAIN
It was midnight when the train set us down at Tai-
an-fu. The moon was full. We passed across fields,
through deserted alleys where sleepers lay naked on
the ground, under a great gate in a great waU, by
haUs and pavilions, by shimmering tree-shadowed
spaces, up and down steps, and into a court where
cypresses grew. We set up our beds in a verandah,
and woke to see leaves against the morning sky. We
explored the vast temple and its monuments — iron
vessels of the Tang age, a great tablet of the Sungs, trees
said to date from before the Christian era, stones in
scribed with drawings of these by the Emperor Chien
Lung, haU after hah, court after court, ruinous, over
grown, and the great crumbling walls and gates and
towers. Then in the afternoon we began the ascent
of Tai Shan, the most sacred mountain in China, the
most frequented, perhaps, in the world. There, accord
ing to tradition, legendary emperors worshipped God.
Confucius cUmbed it six centuries before Christ, and
sighed, we are told, to find his native State so smaU.
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The great Chin-Shih-Huang was there in the third
century B.C. Chien Lung in the eighteenth century
covered it with inscriptions. And miUions of humble
pilgrims for thirty centuries at least have toUed up the
steep and narrow way. Steep it is, for it makes no
detours, but foUows straight up the bed of a stream,
and the greater part of the five thousand feet is ascended
by stone steps. A great ladder of eighteen flights
climbs the last ravine, and to see it from below, sinuously
mounting the precipitous face to the great arch that
leads on to the summit, is enough to daunt the most
ardent walker. We at least were glad to be chaired
some part of the way. A wonderful way ! On the lower
slopes it passes from portal to portal, from temple to
temple. Meadows shaded with aspen and wiUow border
the stream as it falls from green pool to green pool.
Higher up are scattered pines Else the rocks are bare
— bare, but very beautiful, with that significance of form
which I have found everywhere in the mountains in China.
To such beauty the Chinese are peculiarly sensitive.
AU the way up the rocks are carved with inscriptions
recording the charm and the sanctity of the place. Some
of them were written by emperors ; many, especiaUy, by
Chien Lung, the great patron of art in the eighteenth
century. They are models, one is told, of caUgraphy as
weU as of Uterary composition. Indeed, according to
Chinese standards, they could not be the one without the
other. The very names of favourite spots are poems in
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A SACRED MOUNTAIN
themselves. One is " the pavilion of the phoenixes " ;
another " the fountain of the white cranes." A rock is
called " the tower of the quickening spirit " ; the gate on
the summit is " the portal of the clouds." More prosaic,
but not less charming, is an inscription on a rock in the
plain, "the place of the three smiles," because there
some mandarins, meeting to drink and converse, told
three peculiarly funny stories. Is not that delightful ?
It seems so to me. And so peculiarly Chinese !
It was dark before we reached the summit. We put up
in the temple that crowns it, dedicated to Yii Huang,
the " Jade Emperor " of the Taoists ; and his image and
those of his attendant deities watched our slumbers. But
we did not sleep tiU we had seen the moon rise, a great
orange disc, straight from the plain, and swiftly mount till
she made the river, five thousand feet below, a silver
streak in the dim grey levels.
Next morning, at sunrise, we saw that, north and east,
range after range of lower hills stretched to the horizon,
while south lay the plain, with half a hundred streams
gleaming down to the river from the vaUeys. FuU in view
was the hiU where, more than a thousand years ago, the
great Tang poet Li-tai-po retired with five companions
to drink and make verses. They are still known to
tradition as the " six idlers of the bamboo grove " ; and
the morning sun, I half thought, still shines upon their
symposium. We spent the day on the mountain ; and
as the hours passed by, more and more it showed
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itself to be a sacred place. Sacred to what god ? No
question is harder to answer of any sacred place, for
there are as many ideas of the god as there are
worshippers. There are temples here to various gods :
to the mountain himself; to the Lady of the
mountain, Pi-hsia-yiien, who is at once the Venus
of Lucretius — "goddess of procreation, gold as the
clouds, blue as the sky," one inscription calls her —
and the kindly mother who gives children to women and
heals the little ones of their ailments ; to the Great
Bear ; to the Green Emperor, who clothes the trees
with leaves ; to the Cloud-compeller ; to many others.
And in aU this, is there no room for God ? It is a poor
imagination that would think so. When men worship
the mountain, do they worship a rock, or the spirit of
the place, or the spirit that has no place ? It is the
latter, we may be sure, that some men adored, standing
at sunrise on this spot. And the Jade Emperor — is he
a mere idol ? In the temple where we slept were three
inscriptions set up by the Emperor Chien Lung. They
run as foUows : —
" Without labour, oh Lord, Thou bringest forth the greatest
things."
" Thou leadest Thy company of spirits to guard the whole
world."
" In the company of Thy spirits. Thou art wise as a mighty
Lord to achieve great works."
These might be sentences from the Psalms ; they are
as religious as anything Hebraic. And if it be retorted
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A SACRED MOUNTAIN
that the mass of the worshippers on Tai Shan are super
stitious, so are, and always have been, the mass of
worshippers anywhere. Those who rise to religion in
any country are few. India, I suspect, is the great
exception. But I do not know that they are fewer
in China than elsewhere. For that form of religion,
indeed, which consists in the worship of natural beauty
and what lies behind it — for the religion of a Words
worth — they seem to be pre-eminently gifted. The
cult of this mountain, and of the many others like it in
China, the choice of sites for temples and monasteries,
the inscriptions, the little pavfiions set up where the
view is loveliest — aU goes to prove this. In England
we have lovelier hills, perhaps, than any in China. But
where is our sacred mountain ? Where, in aU the
country, that charming mythology which once in Greece
and Italy, as now in China, was the outward expression
of the love of nature ?
" Great God, I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn."
That passionate cry of a poet born into a naked world
would never have been wrung from him had he been
born in China.
And that leads me to one closing reflection. When
lovers of China — " pro-Chinese," as they are contemptu
ously caUed in the East — assert that China is more
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civilised than the modern West, even the candid
Westerner, who is imperfectly acquainted with the facts,
is apt to suspect insincere paradox. Perhaps these few
notes on Tai Shan may help to make the matter clearer.
A people that can so consecrate a place of natural beauty
is a people of fine feeling for the essential values of life.
That they should also be dirty, disorganised, corrupt,
incompetent, even if it were true — and it is far from
being true in any unqualified sense — would be irrelevant
to this issue. On a foundation of inadequate material
prosperity they reared, centuries ago, the superstructure
of a great culture. The West, in rebuUding its foun
dations, has gone far to destroy the superstructure.
Western civilisation, wherever it penetrates, brings
with it water-taps, sewers, and police ; but it brings
also an ugliness, an insincerity, a vulgarity never before
known to history, unless it be under the Roman Empire.
It is terrible to see in China the first wave of this Western
flood flinging along the coasts and rivers and raUway
lines its scrofulous foam of advertisements, of corru
gated iron roofs, of vulgar, meaningless architectural
forms. In China, as in aU old civilisations I have seen,
aU the building of man harmonises with and adorns
nature. In the West everything now built is a blot.
Many men, I know, sincerely think that this destruction
of beauty is a smaU matter, and that only decadent
aesthetes would pay any attention to it in a world so much
in need of sewers and hospitals. I believe this view to
[ioo]

A SACRED MOUNTAIN
be profoundly mistaken. The ugliness of the West is a
symptom of a disease of the Soul. It implies that the
end has been lost sight of in the means. In China the
opposite is the case. The end is clear, though the means
be inadequate. Consider what the Chinese have done
to Tai Shan, and what the West wiU shortly do, once
the stream of Western tourists begins to flow strongly.
Where the Chinese have constructed a winding stairway
of stone, beautiful from aU points of view, Europeans
or Americans wiU run up a funicular railway, a staring
scar that wUl never heal. Where the Chinese have
written poems in exquisite caligraphy, they wiU cover
the rocks with advertisements. Where the Chinese
have bmlt a series of temples, each so designed
and placed as to be a new beauty in the landscape,
they wiU run up restaurants and hotels like so many
scabs on the face of nature. I say with confidence
that they will, because they have done it wherever
there is any chance of a paying investment. WeU,
the Chinese need, I agree, our science, our organisation,
our medicine. But is it affectation to think they may
have to pay too high a price for it, and to suggest that
in acquiring our material advantages they may lose
what we have gone near to lose, that fine and sensitive
culture which is one of the forms of spiritual life ? The
West talks of civilising China. Would that China could
civilise the West ! [101]

PART III
JAPAN

I
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF JAPAN
Japan, surely, must be a mirage created by enchant
ment. Nothing so beautiful could be real. Take the
west coast of Scotland, bathe it in Mediterranean light
and sun, and let its waves be those of the Pacific. Take
the best of Devonshire, enlarge the hiUs, extend the
plains, and dominate aU with the only perfect mountain
in the world — a mountain that catches at your breath
like a masterpiece of art. Make the copses woods, and
the woods forests. For our fields with their hedge
rows substitute the vivid green of rice, shining across
the gleam of flooded plains. Everywhere let water
flow ; and at every waterfaU and cave erect a little
shrine to hallow the spot. Over the whole pour a flood
of pure white light, and you have a faint image of
Japan. Perhaps it is not, naturally, more beautiful
than the British Isles — few countries are. But it is
unspoilt by man, or almost so. Osaka, indeed, is as
ugly as Manchester, Yokohama as Liverpool. But
these are smaU blots. For the rest, Japan is Japan of
the Middle Ages, and lovely as England may have
been, when England could still be called merry.
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And the people are lovely, too. I do not speak of
facial beauty. Some may think, in that respect, the
English or the Americans handsomer. But these
people have the beauty of life. Instead of the tomb
stone masques that pass for faces among Anglo-Saxons,
they have human features, quick, responsive, mobile.
Instead of the slow, long limbs creaking in stiff integu
ments, they have active members, for the most bare
or moving freely in loose robes. Instead of a mumbled,
monotonous, machine-like emission of sound they have
real speech, vivacious, varied, musical. Their children
are the loveUest in the world ; so gay, so sturdy, so
cheeky, yet never rude. It is a pure happiness merely
to walk in the streets and look at them. It is a pure
happiness, I might almost say, to look at anyone, so
gay is their greeting, so radiant their smile, so full
of vitaUty their gestures. I do not know what they
think of the foreigner, but at least they betray no
animosity. They let his stiff, ungainly presence move
among them unchaUenged. Perhaps they are sorry for
him ; but I think they are never rude. I am speaking,
• of course, of Old Japan, of the Japan that is aU in
evidence, if one lands, as I did, in the south, avoids
Osaka, and postpones Yokohama and Tokio. It is stiU
the Japan of feudalism ; a system in which I, for my
part, do not believe ; which, in its essence, in Japan as
in Europe, was harsh, unjust, and cruel ; but which had
the art of fostering, or at least of not destroying beauty.
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FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF JAPAN
And in this point feudalism in Japan was finer and
more sensitive, if it was less grandiose, than feudalism in
Europe. There is nothing in Japan to compare with
the churches and cathedrals of the West, for there is
no stone architecture at aU. But there is nothing in
the West to compare with the Uving-rooms of Japan.
Suites of these dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries are to be seen in Kyoto and elsewhere. And
tiU I saw them I had no idea how exquisite human life
might be made. The Japanese, as is weU known, dis
covered the secret of emptiness. Their rooms consist
of a floor of spotless matting, paper walls, and a wooden
roof. But the paper waUs, in these old palatial rooms,
are masterpieces by great artists. From a background
of gold-leaf emerge and fade away suggestions of river
and coast and hiU, of peonies, chrysanthemums, lotuses,
of wfld geese and swans, of reeds and pools, of aU that
is elusive and choice in nature ; decorations that are also
lyric poems, hints of landscape that yet never pretend
to be a substitute for the real thing. The real thing
is outside, and perhaps it wiU not intrude ; for where
we should have glass windows the Japanese have white
paper screens. But draw back, if you choose, one of
these screens, and you will see a little landscape garden,
a little lake, a little bridge, a tiny rockery, a few gold
fish, a cluster of irises, a bed of lotus, and, above and
beyond, the great woods. These are royal apartments ;
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but aU the cost, it wiU be seen, is lavished on the
work of art. The principle is the same in humbler
homes. People who could so devise Ufe, we may be sure, are
people with a fineness of perception unknown to the
West, unless it were once in ancient Greece. The
Japanese indeed, I suspect, are the Greeks of the East.
In the theatre at Kyoto this was curiously borne in
upon me. On the floor of the house reclined figures
in loose robes, bare-necked and barefooted. On the
narrow stage were one or two actors, chanting in
measured speech, and moving slowly from pose to pose.
From boxes on either side of the stage intoned a kind
of chorus ; and a flute and pizzicato strings accom
panied the whole in the solemn strains of some ancient
mode. I have seen nothing so like what a Greek play
may have been, though doubtless even this was far
enough away. And stiU more was I struck by the
resemblance when a comedy succeeded to the tragedy,
and I found the young and old Japan confronting
one another exactly as the young and old Athens met
in debate, two thousand years ago, in the Frogs of
Aristophanes. The theme was an ascent of Mount
Fuji ; the actors two groups of young girls, one cos
tumed as virgin priestesses of the Shinto cult, the other
in modern European dress. The one set were climbing
the mountain as a pilgrimage, the other as a lark ;
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FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF JAPAN
and they meet and exchange sharp dialectics (un-
inteUigible to me, but not unguessable) on the lower
slopes. The sympathies of the author, like those of
Aristophanes, were with the old school. It is the
pilgrims who reach the top and the modern young
women who coUapse. And the modern young man fares
no better ; he is beaten by a coolie and frightened by
a ghost. The playwright had at least Aristophanes' gift
of lampoon, though I doubt whether he had a touch of
his genius. Perhaps, however, he had a better cause.
For, I doubt, modern Japan may deserve lampooning
more than the Athens of Aristophanes. For modern
Japan is the modern West. And that — well, it seemed
to be symbolised to me yesterday in the train. In my
carriage were two Japanese. One was loosely wrapt in a
kimono, bare throat and feet, fine features, fine gestures,
everything aristocratic and distinguished. The other
was clad in European dress, sprigged waistcoat, gold
watch-chain, a coarse, thick-lipped face, a podgy figure.
It was a hot July day, and we were passing through
some of the loveliest scenery in the world. He first
closed aU doors and windows, and then extended him
self at fuU length and went to sleep. There he lay, his
great paunch sagging — prosperity exuding from every
pore — an emblem and type of what in the West we call
a "successful" man. And the other? The other, no
doubt, was going downhill. Both, of course, were
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Japanese types ; but the civilisation of the West chose
the one and rejected the other. And if civilisation is to
be judged, as it fairly may be, by the kind of men it
brings to the top, there is much to be said for the point
of view of my Tory playwright.

[no]

II
A "NO" DANCE
On entering the theatre I was invaded by a sense
of serenity and peace. There was no ornament, no
upholstery, . no superfluity at aU. A square building
of unvarnished wood ; a floor covered with matting,
exquisitely clean, and divided into little boxes, or
rather trays (so low were the partitions), in which
the audience knelt on their heels, beautiful in loose
robes; running out from the back waU a square
stage, with a roof supported by pulars ; a passage on
the same level, by which the actors entered, on the left ;
the screens removed from the outer walls, so that the
hall was open to the air, and one looked out on sky
and trees, or later on darkness, against which shone a
few painted lanterns. Compare this with the Queen's
HaU in London, or with any of our theatres, and realise
the effect on one's mood of the mere setting of the
drama. Drama was it ? Or opera ? Or what ? It is
caUed a " dance." But there was very little dancing.
What mainly remains in my mind is a series of visual
images, one more beautiful than another ; figures
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seated motionless for minutes, almost for half-hours,
with a stiUness of statues, not an eyelash shaking;
or passing very slowly across the stage, with that
movement of bringing one foot up to the other and
pausing before the next step which is so ridiculous in
our opera, but was here so right and so impressive ;
or turning slowly, or rising and sitting with immense
deliberation ; each figure right in its relation to the
stage and to the others. AU were clothed in stiff
brocade, sumptuous but not gorgeous. One or two
were masked ; and all of them, I felt, ought to have
been. The mask, in fact, the use of which in Greek
drama I had always felt to be so questionable, was here
triumphantly justified. It completed the repudiation of
actuality which was the essence of the effect. It was a
musical sound, as it were, made visible. It symbolised
humanity, but it was not human, stiU less inhuman.
I would rather call it divine. And this whole art of
movement and costume required that completion.
Once I had seen a mask I missed it in all the characters
that were without it.
To me, then, this visual spectacle was the essence of
the " No " dance. The dancing itself, when it came, was
but a slight intensification of the slow and solemn posing
I have described. There was no violence, no leaping,
no quick steps ; rather a turning and bending, a slow
sweep of the arm, a walking a little more rhythmical,
on the verge, at most, of running. It was never ex-
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A "NO" DANCE
citing, but I could not say it was never passionate. It
seemed to express a kind of frozen or petrified passion ;
rather, perhaps, a passion run into a mould of beauty and
turned out a statue. I have never seen an art of such
reserve and such distinction. " Or of such tediousness,"
I seem to hear an impatient reader exclaim. WeU, let
me be frank. Like aU Westerners, I am accustomed
to life in quick time, and to an art full of episode, of
inteUectual content, of rapid change and rapid develop
ment. I have lost to a great extent that power of pro
longing an emotion which seems to be the secret of
Eastern art. I am bored — subconsciously, as it were —
where an Oriental is lulled into ecstasy. His case is the
better. But also, in this matter of the No dance he
has me at a disadvantage. In the first place he can
understand the words. These, it is true, have far less
importance than in a drama of Shakspere. They are
only a lyric or narrative accompaniment to the music
and the dance. StiU they have, one is informed, a
beauty much appreciated by Japanese, and one that
the stranger, ignorant of the language, misses. And
secondly, what is worse, the music failed to move me.
Whether this is my own fault, or that of the music, I do not
presume to decide, for I do not know whether, as so often
is the case, I was defeated by a convention unfamiliar
to me, or whether the convention has really become
formal and artificial. In any case, after the first shock
of interest, I found the music monotonous. It was
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solemn and religious in character, and reminded me more
of Gregorian chants than of anything else. But it had
one curious feature which seemed rather to be primi
tive and orgiastic. The two musicians who played the
drums accompanied the performers, almost unceasingly,
by a kind of musical ejaculation, starting on a low note
and swooping up to a high, long-held falsetto cry. This
over and over again, through the dialogue and through
the singing. The object, I suppose, and perhaps, to
Japanese, the effect, is to sustain a high emotional
tone. In my case it failed, as the music generaUy
failed. My interest, as I began by saying, was main
tained by the visual beauty ; and that must have been
very great to be able to maintain itself independently
of the words and the music.
As to the drama, it is not drama at all in the sense in
which we have come to understand the term in the
West. There is no " construction," no knot tied and
untied, no character. Rather there is a succession of
scenes selected from a weU-known story for some quality
of poignancy, or merely of narrative interest. The form,
I think, should be caUed epic or lyric rather than
dramatic. And it is in this point that it most obviously
differs from the Greek drama. It has no intellectual
content, or very little. And, perhaps for that reason,
it has had no development, but remains fossilised where
it was in the fifteenth century. On the other hand,
these actors, I felt, are the only ones who could act
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A "NO" DANCE
Greek drama. They have, I think, quite clearly the
same tradition and aim as the Greeks. They desire
not to reproduce but to symbolise actuality ; and their
conception of acting is the very opposite of ours. The
last thing they aim at is to be " natural." To be un
natural rather is their object. Hence the costume,
hence the mask, hence the movement and gesture.
And how effective such " unnaturalness " can be in
evoking natural passion only those will understand who
have reaUsed how ineffective for that purpose is our
" naturalness " when we are concerned with Sophocles
or Shakspere. The Japanese have in their No dance a
great treasure. For out of it they might, if they have
the genius, develop a modern poetic drama. How
thankful would hundreds of young men be, starving for
poetry in England, if we had as a Uving tradition any
thing analogous to work upon !

["5]

Ill
NIKKO
Waking in the night, I heard the sound of running
water. Across my window I saw, stretching dimly, the
branch of a pine, and behind it shone the stars. I
remembered that I was in Japan and felt that aU the
essence of it was there. Running water, pine trees, sun
and moon and stars. AU their life, as aU their art, seems
to be a mood of these. For to them their life and their
art are inseparable. The art is not an accomplishment,
an ornament, an excrescence. It is the flower of the
plant. Some men, some families of men, feeling beauty
as every one felt it, had the power also to express it.
Or perhaps I should say — it is the Japanese view — to
suggest it. To them the branch of a tree stands for a
forest, a white disk on gold for night and the moon,
a quivering reed for a river, a bamboo stalk for a grove.
Their painters are poets. By passionate observation they
have learnt what expression of the part most inevitably
symbolises the whole. That they give ; and their
admirers, trained like them in feeling, fiU in the rest.
[1x6]

NIKKO
This art presupposes, what it has always had, a public
not less sensitive than the artist ; a similar mood, a
similar tradition, a simflar culture. Feel as they do, and
you must create as they do, or at least appreciate their
creations. It was with this in my mind that I wandered about
this exquisite place, where Man has made a lovely
nature lovelier stiU. More even than by the famous
and sumptuous temples I was moved by the smaller and
humbler shrines, so caressing are they of every choice
spot, so expressive, not of princely, but of popular
feeling. Here is one, for instance, standing under a
cliff beside a stream, where women offer bits of wood
in the faith that so they wiU be helped to pass safely
through the pangs of childbirth. Here in a ravine is
another where men who want to develop their calves
hang up sandals to a once athletic saint. " The Lord,"
our Scripture says, " delighteth not in any man's legs."
How pleasant, then, it must be to have a saint who
does ! EspeciaUy for the Japanese, whose legs are so
finely made, and who display them so delightfully.
Such, aU over the world, is the reUgion of the people,
when they have any religion at aU. And how human it
is, and how much nearer to life than the austerities
and abstractions of a creed !
Hour after hour I stroUed through these lovely
places, so beautifuUy ordered that the authorities, one
feels, must themselves delight in the nature they con-
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trol. I had proof of it, I thought, in a notice which
ran as foUows :
"Famous Takino Temple stands not far away,
and Somen Fall too. It is worth while to be
there once."
It is indeed, and many times ! But can you imagine
a rural council in England breaking into this personal
note ? And how reserved ! Almost like Japanese art.
Compare the invitation I once saw in Switzerland, to
visit " das schonste Schwann- und Aussichtspunkt des
ganzen Schweitzerischen Reichs." There speaks the
advertiser. But beside the Somen FaU there was no
restaurant. Northerners, and Anglo-Saxons in particular, have
always at the back of their minds a notion that there
is something effeminate about the sense for beauty.
That is reserved for decadent Southern nations. Tu
regere imperio populos, Romane memento they would
say, if they knew the tag ; and translate it " Britain
rules the waves " ! But history gives the lie to this
complacent theory. No nations were ever more virile
than the Greeks or the Italians. They have left a
mark on the world which wiU endure when Anglo-Saxon
civilisation is forgotten. And none have been, or are,
more virile than the Japanese. That they have the
delicacy of women, too, does not alter the fact. The
Russian War proved it, if proof so tragic were required ;
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NIKKO
and so does aU their mediaeval history. Japanese
feudalism was as bloody, as ruthless, as hard as European.
It was even more gaUant, stoical, loyal. But it had
something else which I think Europe missed, unless it
were once in Provence. It had in the midst of its hard
ness a consciousness of the pathos of life, of its beauty,
its brevity, its inexplicable pain. I think in no other
country has anything arisen analogous to the Zen sect
of Buddhism, when knights withdrew from battle to a
garden and summerhouse, exquisitely ordered to sym
bolise the spiritual life, and there, over a cup of tea
served with an elaborate ritual, looking out on a lovely
nature, entered into mystic communion with the spirit
of beauty which was also the spirit of life. From that
communion, with that mood about them, they passed
out to kiU or to die — to die, it might be, by their own
hand, by a process which I think no Western man can
bear even to think of, much less conceive himself as
imitating. This sense at once of the beauty and of the tragedy
of life, this power of appreciating the one and dominat
ing the other, seems to be the essence of the Japanese
character. In this place, it wiU be remembered, is thp
tomb of Iyeyasu, the greatest statesman Japan has
produced. Appropriately, after his battles and his
labours, he sleeps under the shade of trees, surrounded
by chapels and oratories more sumptuous and superb
than anything else in Japan, approached for miles and
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APPEARANCES
miles by a road lined on either side with giant crypto-
merias. His spirit, if it could know, would appreciate,
we may be sure, this habitation of beauty. For these
men, ruthless as they were, were none the less sensitive.
For example, the traveUer is shown (in Kyoto, I think)
a Uttle pavilion in a garden where Hideyoshi used to
sit and contemplate the moon. I believe it. I think
Iyeyasu did the same. And also he wrote this, on a
roU here preserved :
" Life is like unto a long journey with a heavy load.
Let thy steps be slow and steady, that thou stumble
not. Persuade thyself that privations are the natural
lot of mortals, and there wiU be no room for discontent,
neither for despair. When ambitious desires arise in
thy heart, recall the days of extremity thou hast passed
through. Forbearance is the root of quietness and
assurance for ever. Look upon wrath as thy enemy. If
thou knowest only what it is to conquer, and knowest
not what it is to be defeated, woe unto thee ! It will
fare iU with thee. Find fault with thyself rather than
with others. Better the less than the more."
Marcus AureUus might have said that. But Marcus
Aurelius belonged to a race peculiarly insensitive to
beauty. The Japanese stoics were also artists and
poets. Their earliest painters were feudal lords, and it
was feudal lords who fostered and acted the No dances.
If Nietzsche had known Japan — I think he did not ? —
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NIKKO
he would surely have found in these Daimyos and
Samurai the forerunners of his Superman. A blood-
red blossom growing out of the battlefield, that, I think,
was his ideal. It is one which, I hope, the world has
outlived. I look for the lily flowering over the fields
of peace.

[121]

IV
DIVINE RIGHT IN JAPAN
When Japan was opened to the West, after more than
two centuries of seclusion, she was in possession of a
national spirit which had" been enabled, by isolation,
to become and remain simple and homogeneous. All
public feeling, aU public morals centred about the
divinity of the Emperor ; an idea which, by a process
unique in history, had hibernated through centuries of
political obscuration, and emerged again to the light
with its prestige unimpaired in the middle of the
nineteenth century. In the Emperor, one may say,
Japan was incarnate. And to this faith the Japanese,
as well as foreign observers, attribute their great
achievement in the Russian War. The little book
of Captain Sakurai, Human Bullets, testifies to this
fact in every sentence : " Through the abundant grace
of Heaven and the iUustrious virtue of his Majesty,
the Imperial forces defeated the great enemy both on
land and sea." ..." I jumped out of bed, cleansed
my person with pure water, donned my best uniform,
bowed to the East where the great Sire resides, solemnly
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DIVINE RIGHT IN JAPAN
read his proclamation of war, and told his Majesty
that his humble subject was just starting to the front.
When I offered my last prayers — the last I then beUeved
they were — before the faimly shrine of my ancestors
I felt a thriU going aU through me, as if they were
giving me a solemn injunction, saying : ' Thou art not
thy own. For his Majesty's sake, thou shalt go to save
the nation from calamity, ready to bear the crushing
of thy bones and the tearing of thy flesh. Disgrace
not thy ancestors by an act of cowardice.' " This, it
is clear, is an attitude quite different from that of an
Englishman towards the King. The King, to us, is at
most a symbol. The Emperor, to the Japanese, is,
or was, a god. And the difference may be noted in
smaU matters. For instance, a Japanese, writing from
England, observes with astonishment that we put the
head of the King on our stamps and cover it with post
marks. That, to a Japanese, seems to be blasphemy.
Again, he is puzzled, at the Coronation in Westminster
Abbey, to find the people looking down from above
on the King. That, again, seems to him blasphemy.
Last year, when the Emperor was dying, crowds knelt
hour after hour, day and night, on the road beside the
palace praying for him. And a photographer who took
a picture of them by flashlight was UteraUy torn to
pieces. One could multiply examples, but the thing
is plain. The national spirit of Japan centres about
the divinity of the Emperor. And precisely therein
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lies their present problem. For one may say, I think,
with confidence that this attitude cannot endure,
and is already disappearing. Western thought is an
irresistible solvent of aU irrational and instinctive
ideas. Men cannot be engineers and pathologists and
at the same time believe that a man is a god. They
cannot be historians and at the same time believe that
their first Emperor came down from heaven. Above
aU, they cannot be politicians and abstain from analysing
the real source and sanction of poUtical power. English
political experience, it is true, suggests immense possi-
biUties in the way of clinging to fictions with the feelings
while insisting upon facts in practice. And the famous
verse : " But I was thinking of a plan
To dye my whiskers green,
And always wear so large a fan
That they should not be seen,"
might have been written to summarise the development
of the British Constitution. But the success of that
method depends upon the condition that the fictions
shaU be nothing but fictions. The feelings of the English
can centre about the King only because they are well
assured that he does not and wiU not govern. But
that condition does not exist in Japan. The Japanese
Constitution is conceived on the German, not the
EngUsh, model ; and it bristles with clauses which are
intended to prevent the development which has taken
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DIVINE RIGHT IN JAPAN
place in England — the shifting of power from the
Sovereign to a Parliamentary majority. The Ministers
are the Emperor's Ministers ; the policy is the Emperor's
policy. That is the whole tenour of the Constitu
tion. No Constitution, it is true, can " trammel up "
facts and put power anywhere but where nature puts
it. If an Emperor is not a strong man he wiU not
govern, and his Ministers wiU. And it seems to be
well understood among Japanese poUticians that the
personal wiU of the Emperor does not, in fact, count
for very much. But it is supposed to ; and that must
become an important point so soon as conflict develops
between the ParUament and the Government. And
such conflict is bound to arise, and is already arising.
Japanese parties, it is true, stand for persons rather
than principles ; and the real governing power hitherto
has been a body quite unknown to the Constitution —
namely, the group of " Elder Statesmen." But there
are signs that this group is disintegrating, and that its
members are beginning to recognise the practical neces
sity of forming and depending upon a party in the
country and the House of Representatives. The crisis
which led, the other day, to the faU of Prince Katsura
was provoked by popular tumults ; and it was notice
able that, for the first time, the name of the Emperor
was introduced into poUtical controversy. It seems
clear that in the near future either the Emperor must
appear openly as a fighting force, as the German Emperor
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APPEARANCES
does, or he must subside into a figure-head and the
government pass into the hands of Parliament. The
former alternative is quite incompatible with the idea
of the god-king; the latter might not be repugnant
to it if other things tended to foster it. But it is so
clear that they do not ! An Emperor who is titular
head of a Parliamentary Government might, and in
Japan no doubt would, be surrounded with affection
and respect. He could never be seriously regarded
as divine. For that whole notion belongs to an age
innocent of aU that is implied in the very possibility
of Parliamentary government. It belongs to the age
of mythology and poetry, not to the age of reason.
Japanese patriotism in the future must depend on
love of country, unsupported by the once powerful
sanction of a divine personality.
If this be true, I question very much the wisdom
of that part of the Japanese educational system which
endeavours to centre all duty about the person of the
Emperor. The Japanese are trying a great experiment
in State-imposed morality — a policy highly question
able at the best, but becoming almost demonstrably
absurd when it is based on an idea which is foredoomed
to discredit. The weU-known Imperial rescript, which
is kept framed in every school, reads as foUows :
"Our Ancestors founded the State on a vast basis,
and deeply implanted virtue ; and Our subjects, by their
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DIVINE RIGHT IN JAPAN
unanimity in their great loyalty and fifial affection,
have in aU ages shown these qualities in perfection.
Such is the essential beauty of Our national polity,
and such, too, is the true spring of Our educational
system. You, Our beloved subjects, be filial to your
parents, affectionate to your brothers, be loving hus
bands and wives, and truthful to your friends. Conduct
yourselves with modesty, and be benevolent to all.
Develop your inteUectual faculties and perfect your
moral power by gaining knowledge and by acquiring
a profession. Further, promote the public interest and
advance the pubUc affairs ; and in case of emergency,
courageously sacrifice yourself to the public good.
Thus offer every support to Our Imperial Dynasty,
which shaU be as lasting as the Universe. You wiU
then not only be Our most loyal subjects, but will be
enabled to exhibit the noble character of your ancestors.
" Such are the testaments left us by Our Ancestors,
which must be observed alike by their descendants
and subjects. These precepts are perfect throughout
aU ages and of universal application. It is Our desire
to bear them in Our heart, in common with you Our
subjects, to the end that we may constantly possess
their virtues."
This rescript may be read with admiration. But
common sense would teach every Westerner that a
document so framed is at variance with the whole bent
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of the modern mind, and, if forced upon it, could only
goad it into rebeUion. And such, I have been informed,
and easUy believe, is the effect it is beginning to have in
Japan. Young people brought up on Western languages
and Western science demand a Western, that is a
rational, sanction for conduct. They do not believe the
Emperor to be divine, and therefore they cannot take
their moral principles on trust from him and from
his ancestors. The violent reaction from this State-
imposed doctrine drives them into sheer scepticism
and anarchy. And here, as always throughout history,
authority defeats its own purposes. Western ideas
cannot be taken in part. They cannot be applied to the
natural world and fenced off from the moral world.
Japan must go through the same crisis through which
the West is passing ; she must revise the whole basis
of her traditional morals. And in doing so she must
be content to lose that passionate and simple devotion
which is the good as well as the evil product of an age
of uncritical faith.

[128]

FUJI
It was raining when we reached Gotemba and took
off our boots at the entrance of the inn. I had never
before stayed at a Japanese inn, and this one, so my
friend assured me, was a bad specimen of the class.
Certainly it was disorderly and dirty. It was also
overcrowded. But that was inevitable, for a thousand
pilgrims in a day were landing at Gotemba station.
Men and women, young and old, grandparents, parents,
children come flocking in to climb the great mountain.
The village street is lined with inns ; and in front of
each stood a boy with a lantern haiUng the new arrivals.
We were able, in spite of the crowd, to secure a room
to ourselves, and even, with difficulty, some water to
wash in — too many people had used and were using the
one bath ! A table and a chair were provided for the
foreigner, and very uncouth they looked in the pretty
Japanese room. But a bed was out of the question.
One had to sleep on the floor among the fleas. Certainly
it was not comfortable ; but it was amusing. From
my room in the upper storey I looked into the whole row
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APPEARANCES
of rooms in the inn opposite, thrown open to the street,
with their screens drawn back. One saw families and
parties, a dozen or more in a room, dressing and un
dressing, naked and clothed, sleeping, eating, talking ;
aU, of course, squatting on the floor, with a low stool
for a table, and red-lacquered bowls for plates and
dishes. How people manage to eat rice with chop
sticks wiU always be a mystery to me. For my own
part, I cannot, even — but I will not open that humiliating
chapter. Of the night, the less said the better. I rose with
relief, but dressed with embarrassment ; for the girl
who waited on us selected the moment of my toilet
to clean the room. It was still raining hard, and we
had decided to abandon our expedition, for another
night in that inn was unthinkable. But, about eleven,
a gleam of sun encouraged us to proceed, and we
started on horseback for the mountain. And here I
must note that by the official tariff, approved by the
police, a foreigner is charged twice as much for a horse
as a Japanese. If one asks why, one is calmly informed
that a foreigner, as a rule, is heavier ! This is typical
of travel in Japan ; and there have been moments
when I have sympathised with the Californians in their
discrimination against the Japanese. Those moments,
however, are rare and brief, and speedily repented of.
Naturally, as soon as we had started the weather
clouded over again. We rode for three hours at a foot-
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FUJI
pace, and by the time we left our horses and began
the ascent on foot we were wrapped in thick, cold mist.
There is no difficulty about climbing Fuji, except the
fatigue. You simply walk for hours up a steep and
ever-steeper heap of ashes. It was perhaps as weU
that we did not see what lay before us, or we might
have been discouraged. We saw nothing but the
white-grey mist and the purple-grey soil. Except that,
looming out of the cloud just in front of us, there kept
appearing and vanishing a long line of pilgrims, with
peaked hats, capes, and sandals, all made of straw,
winding along with their staffs, forty at least, keeping
step, like figures in a frieze, like shadows on a sheet,
like spirits on the mountain of Purgatory, like anything
but solid men walking up a hiU. So for hours we
laboured on, the slope becoming steeper every step,
tiU we could go no further, and stopped at a shelter
to pass the night. Here we were lucky. The other
climbers had halted below or above, and we had the
long, roomy shed to ourselves. Blankets, a fire of wood,
and a good meal restored us. We sat warming and
congratulating ourselves, when suddenly our guide at
the door gave a cry. We hurried to see. And what a
sight it was ! The clouds lay below us and a starlit sky
above. At our feet the mountain feU away like a cliff,
but it feU rather to a glacier than a sea — a glacier
infinite as the ocean, yawning in crevasses, biUowing
in ridges ; a glacier not of ice, but of vapour, changing
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form as one watched, opening here, closing there, rising,
faUing, shifting, while far away, at the uttermost verge,
appeared a crimson crescent, then a red oval, then a
yeUow globe, swimming up above the clouds, touching
their lights with gold, deepening their shadows, and
spreading, where it rose, a lake of silver fire over the
surface of the tossing plain.
We looked tiU it was too cold to look longer, then
wrapped ourselves in quilts and went to sleep. At
midnight I woke. Outside there was a strange moaning,
The wind had risen ; and the sound of it in that lonely
place gave me a shock of fear. The mountain, then,
was more than a heap of dead ashes. Presences haunted
it ; powers indifferent to human fate. That wind had
blown before man came into being, and would blow
when he had ceased to exist. It moaned and roared.
Then it was stiU. But I could not sleep again, and
lay watching the flicker of the lamp on the long wooden
roof, and the streaks of moonlight through the chinks,
tiU the coolie lit a fire and caUed us to get up. We
started at four. The clouds were stiU below, and the
moon above ; but she had moved across to the west,
Orion had appeared, and a new planet blazed in the
east. The last climb was very steep and our breath
very scant. But we had other things than that to
think of. Through a rift in a cloud to the eastward
dawned a salmon-coloured glow ; it brightened to fire j
lit up the clouds above and the clouds below ; blazed
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FUJI
more and intolerably, tiU, as we reached the summit,
the sun leapt into view and sent a long line of light
down the tumultuous sea of roUing cloud.
How cold it was ! And what an atmosphere inside
the highest shelter, where sleepers had been packed like
sardines and the newly kindled fire fiUed the fetid air
with acrid smoke ! What there was to be seen we saw
— the crater, neither wide nor deep ; the Shinto temple,
where a priest was intoning prayers; and the Post
Office, where an enterprising Government seUs picture-
postcards for triumphant pilgrims to despatch to their
friends. My friend must have written at least a dozen,
whfle I waited and shivered with numbed feet and hands.
But after an hour we began the descent, and quickly
reached the shelter where we were to breakfast. Thence
we had to plunge again into the clouds. But before
doing so we took a long look at the marvellous scene —
more marveUous than any view of earth ; icebergs
tossing in a sea, mountains exhaling and vanishing*
magic castles and palaces towering across infinite space.
A step, and once more the white-grey mist and the
purple-grey sofl. But the clouds had moved higher ;
and it was not long before we saw, to the south, cliffs
and the sea, to the east, the gleam of green fields,
running up, under cloud-shadows, to mountain ridges
and peaks. And so back to Gotemba, and our now
odious inn.
We would not stop there. So we parted, my friend
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for Tokyo, I for Kyoto. But time-tables had been
faUacious, and I found myself landed at Numatsa, with
four hours to wait for the night train, no comfort in the
waiting-room, and no Japanese words at my command.
I understood then a little better why foreigners are so
offensive in the East. They do not know the language ;
they find themselves impotent where their instinct is
to domineer; and they visit on the Oriental the Ul-
temper which is really produced by their own incom
petence. Yes, I must confess that I had to remind
myself severely that it was I, and not the Japanese,
who was stupid. At last the station-master came to
my rescue — the station-master always speaks English.
He endured my petulance with the unfailing courtesy and
patience of his race, and sent me off at last in a rick
shaw to the beach and a Japanese hotel. But my
troubles were not ended. I reached the hotel ; I bowed
and smiled to the group of kow-towing girls ; but how
to teU them that I wanted a bathe and a meal ? Signs
were unavailing. We looked at one another and
laughed, but that did not help. At last they sent for
a student who knew a Uttle English. I could have
hugged him. " It is a great pity," he said, " that these
people do not know English." The pity, I replied, was
that I did not know Japanese, but his courtesy repu
diated the suggestion. Could I have a bathing costume ?
Of course 1 And in a quarter of an hour he brought
me a wet one. Where could I change ? He showed me a
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FUJI
room ; and presently I was swimming in the sea, with
such delight as he only can know who has ascended
and descended Fuji without the chance of a bath.
Returning to the inn, I wandered about in my wet
costume seeking vainly the room in which I had changed.
Laughing girls pushed me here, and puUed me there,
uncomprehending of my pantomime, tiU one at last,
quicker than the rest, puUed back a slide, and revealed
the room I was seeking. Then came dinner — soup,
fried fish, and rice ; and — for my weakness — a spoon and
fork to eat them with. The whole house seemed to
be open, and one looked into every room, watching
the ways of these gay and charming people. At last
I paid — to accomplish that by pantomime was easy, —
and said good-bye to my hostess and her maids, who
bowed their heads to the ground and smiled as though
I had been the most honoured of guests instead of a
clumsy foreigner, fit food for mirth. A walk in a twilight
pine wood, and then back to the station, where I boarded
the night train, and slept fitfully until five, when we
reached Kyoto, and my wanderings were over. How I
enjoyed the comfort of the best hotel in the East !
But also how I regretted that I had not long ago learnt
to find comfort in the far more beautiful manner of
life of Japan !

[135]

VI
JAPAN AND AMERICA
On the reasons, real or aUeged, for the hostility of the
Californians to the Japanese this is not the place to dweU.
At bottom, it is a conflict of civilisations, a conflict
which is largely due to ignorance and misunderstanding,
and which should never be aUowed to develop into
avowed antagonism. For with time, patience, and
sympathy it wul disappear of itself. The patience and
sympathy, I think, are not lacking on the side of the
Japanese, but they are sadly lacking among the Cali
fornians, and indeed among aU white men in Western
America. The truth is that the Western pioneer knows
nothing of Japan and wants to know nothing. And
he would be much astonished, not to say indignant,
were he told that the civilisation of Japan is higher
than that of America. Yet there can, I think, be no
doubt that this is the case, if real values be taken as a
standard. America, and the " new " countries gene-
raUy, have contributed, so far, nothing to the world
except material prosperity. I do not under-estimate
this. It is a great thing to have subdued a continent.
[136]

JAPAN AND AMERICA
And it may be argued that those who are engaged in
this task have no energy to spare for other activities.
But the Japanese subdued their island centuries, even
miUenniums, ago. And, having reduced it to as high
a state of culture as they required, they began to live
— a thing the new countries have not yet attempted.
To live, in the sense in which I am using the term,
implies that you reflect life in the forms of art, litera
ture, philosophy, and religion. To aU these things the
Japanese have made notable contributions ; less notable,
indeed, than those of China, from whom they derived
their inspiration, but stiU native, genuine, and precious.
To take first bare externals, the physical life of the
Japanese is beautiful. I read with amazement the
other day a quotation from a leading Californian news
paper to the effect that " there is an instinctive sense of
physical repugnance on the part of the Western or
European races towards the Japanese race " ! Had
the writer, I wonder, ever been in Japan ? Perhaps it
would have made no difference to him if he had, for he
is evidently one of those who cannot or wiU not see.
But to me the first and chief impression of Japan is the
physical attractiveness of the people. The Japanese
are perfectly proportioned ; their joints, their hands,
their feet, their hips are elegant and fine ; and they
display to the best advantage these natural graces by
a costume which is as beautiful as it is simple. To see
these perfect figures walking, running, mounting stairs,
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APPEARANCES
bathing, even pulling rickshaws, is to receive a con
stant stream of shocks of surprise and delight. In so
much that, after some weeks in the country, I begin to
feel " a sense of physical repugnance " to Americans
and Europeans — a sense which, if I were as uneducated
and inexperienced as the writer in the Argonaut, I
should call " instinctive," and make the basis of a
campaign of race-hatred. The misfortune is that the
Japanese abandon their own dress when they go abroad.
And in European dress, which they do not understand,
and which conceals their bodies, they are apt to look
mean and vulgar. Similarly, in European dress, they
lose their own perfect manners and mis-acquire the
worst of the West. So that there may be some excuse
for feeling " repugnance " to the Japanese abroad,
though, of course, it is merely absurd and barbarous to
base upon such superficial distaste a policy of perse
cution and insult.
If we turn from the body to the mind and the spirit,
the Japanese show themselves in no respect inferior,
and in some important respects superior, to the Ameri
cans. New though they are to the whole mental attitude
which underUes science and its applications, they have
already, in half a century, produced physicians, sur
geons, pathologists, engineers who can hold their own
with the best of Europe and America. AU that the
West can do in this, its own special sphere, the Japanese,
late-comers though they be, are showing that they can
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JAPAN AND AMERICA
do too. In particular, to apply the only test which the
Western nations seem really to accept, they can build
ships, train men, organise a campaign, and beat a great
Western Power at the West's own game of slaughter.
But aU this, of science and armaments, big though it
bulks in our imagination, is secondary and subordinate
in a true estimate of civflisation. The great claim the
Japanese may make, as I began by saying, is that
they have known how to live ; and they have proved
that by the only test — by the way they have reflected
life. Japanese literature and art may not be as great as
that of Europe ; but it exists, whereas that of America
and aU the new countries is yet to seek. While
Europe was stiU plunged in the darkest of the dark
ages, Japanese poets were already producing songs in
exquisite response to the beauty of nature, the passion
and pathos of human life. From the seventh century
on, their painting and their sculpture was reflecting
in tender and gracious forms the mysteries of their
faith. Their literature and their art changed its
content and its form with the centuries, but it con
tinued without a break, in a stream of genuine inspira
tion, down to the time when the West forced open
the doors of Japan to the world. From that moment,
under the new influences, it has sickened and declined.
But what a record! And a record that is also an
incontrovertible proof that the Japanese belong to the
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civiUsed nations — the nations that can five and express
life. But perhaps this test may be rejected. Morals, it
may be urged, is the touchstone of civilisation, not
art. WeU, take morals. The question is a large one ;
but, summarily, where do the Japanese fail, as com
pared with the Western nations ? Is patriotism the
standard ? In this respect what nation can compete
with them ? Is it courage ? What people are braver ?
Is it industry ? Who is more industrious ? It is their
very industry that has aroused the jealous fears of the
CaUfornians. Is it family Ufe ? Where, outside the
East, is found such solidarity as in Japan ? Is it
sexual purity ? On that point, what Western nation
can hold up its head ? Is it honesty ? What of the
honesty of the West ? No ; no Westerner, knowing
the facts, could for a moment maintain that, aU round
and on the whole, the morals of the Japanese are inferior
to those of Europe or America. It would probably be
easier to maintain the opposite. Judged by every
real test the Japanese civilisation is not lower, it is
higher than that of any of the new countries who
refuse to permit the Japanese to live among them.
That, I admit, does not settle the question. Com
petent and impartial men like Admiral Mahan, who
would admit aU that I have urged, stiU maintain that
the Japanese ought not to be aUowed to settle in the
West. This conclusion I do not now discuss. The
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JAPAN AND AMERICA
point I wish to make is that the question can never be
fairly faced, in a dry light, and with reference only
to the simple facts, until the prejudice is broken
up and destroyed that the Japanese, and aU other
Orientals, are " inferior " races. It is this prejudice
which distorts aU the facts and aU the values, which
makes Californians and British Columbians and Austra
lians sheerly unreasonable, and causes them to jump at
one argument after another, each more faUacious than
the last, to defend an attitude which at bottom is
nothing but the childish and ignorant hatred of the
uncultivated man for everything strange. If the
Japanese had had white skins, should we ever have
heard of the economic argument ? And should we
ever have been presented with that new shibboleth
" unassimilable " ?

[141 J

VII
HOME
Moscow, Berlin, Paris, London ! What a crescendo
of Ufe ! What a quickening of the flow ! What a
gathering intensity ! " Whatever else we may think
of the West," I said to the young French artist, " it is,
at any rate, the centre of life." " Yes," he replied,
" but the curious thing is that that Life produces only
Death. Dead things, and dead people." I reflected.
Yes ! The things certainly were dead. Look at the
Louvre ! Look at the Madeleine ! Look at any of
the streets ! Machine-men had made it aU, not human
souls. The men were dead, then, too ? " Certainly ! "
he insisted. " Their works are a proof. Where there is
life there is art. And there is no art in the modern
world — neither in the East nor in the West." " Then
what is this that looks like Life ? " I said, looking at
the roaring streets. He shrugged his shoulders and
said, " Steam."
With that in my mind, I crossed to England, and
forgot criticism and speculation in the gleam of the
white cliffs, in the trim hedgerows and fields, in the
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HOME
sound of English voices and the sight of English faces.
In London it was the same. The bright-cheeked
messenger boys, the discreetly swaggering chauffeurs,
the quiet, competent young men in City offices who
reassured me about my baggage, the autumn sun on
the maze of misty streets, the vast picturesqueness of
London, its beauty as of a mountain or the sea, fairly
carried me off my feet. And passing St. Paul's — " Dead,"
I muttered, as I looked at its derivative facade, — I
went in to take breath. From the end of the vast,
cold space came the dreary wail I remembered so weU.
I had heard Church music at Moscow, and knew what
it ought to be. But the tremendous passion of that
Eastern plain-song would have offended these discreet
waUs. I was in a " sacred edifice " ; and with a pang
of regret I recaUed the wooden shrines of Japan under
the great trees, the solemn Buddhas, and the crowds
of cheerful worshippers. I walked down the empty nave
and came under the dome. Then something happened
— the thing that always happens when one comes into
touch with the work of a genius. And Wren's dome
proves that he was that. I sat down, and the organ
began to play; or rather, the dome began to sing.
And down the stream of music floated in fragments
visions of my journey — Indians nude like bronzes, blue-
coated Chinese, white robes and bare limbs from Japan,
plains of corn, plains of rice, plains of scorched grass ;
snow-peaks under the stars, volcanoes, green and
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black ; huge rivers, tumbling streams, waterfalls, lakes,
the ocean ; hovels and huts of wood or sun-dried
bricks, thatched or tiled ; marble palaces and baths j
red lacquer, golden tiles ; saints, kings, conquerors, and,
enduring or worshipping these, a myriad generations of
peasants through long miUenniums, toiling, suffering,
believing, in one unchanging course of life, before the
dawn of history on and down to here and now. As
they were, so they are ; and I heard them sound as
with the drone of Oriental music. Then above that
drone something new appeared. Late in time, Western
history emerged, and — astonishing thing — began to move
and change ! " Why," I said, " there's something try
ing to happen ! What is it ? Is there going to be a
melody ? " There was not one. But there was — has
the reader ever heard the second — or is it the third ? —
overture to " Leonora " ? A scale begins to run up,
first on the violins ; then one by one the other instru
ments join in, tiU the great basses are swept into the
current and run and scale too. So it was here. The
West began ; but the East caught it up. The un
changing drone began to move and flow. Faster and
faster, louder and louder, more and more intensely,
crying and flaming towards — what ? Beethoven knew,
and put it into his music. We cannot put it into
ideas or words. We can see the problem, not the
solution ; and the problem is this. To reconcile the
Western flight down Time with the Eastern rest in
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HOME
Eternity ; the Western multiformity with the Eastern
identity ; the Western energy with the Eastern peace.
For God is neither Time nor Eternity, but Time in
Eternity ; neither One nor Many, but One in Many ;
neither Spirit nor Matter, but Matter-Spirit. That the
great artists know, and the great saints ; the modern
artists and the modern saints, who have been or who
wiU be. Goethe was one ; Beethoven was one ; and
there wiU be greater, when the contact between East
and West becomes closer, and the sparks from pole to
pole fly faster.
I had dropped into mere thinking, and realised that
the organ had stopped. I left the great church and
came out upon the back of Queen Anne, which made
me laugh. StiU, it was quite religious ; so were the
'buses, and the motor-cars, and the shops and offices,
and the Law Courts, and the top-hats, and the crossing-
sweepers. " Dear people," I said, " you are not dead,
any more than I am. You think you are, as I too often
do. When you feel dead you should go to church •
but not in a ' sacred edifice.' Beethoven, even in the
Queen's HaU, is better."

[145]

PART IV
AMERICA

I
THE "DIVINE AVERAGE"
The great countries of the East have each a civUisation
that is original, if not independent. India, China,
Japan, each has a peculiar outlook on the world. Not
so America, at any rate in the north. America, we might
say, does not exist ; there exists instead an offshoot of
Europe. Nor does an " American spirit " exist ; there
exists instead the spirit of the average Western man.
Americans are immigrants and descendants of immi
grants. Putting aside the negroes and a handful of
orientals, there is nothing to be found here that is not
to be found in Western Europe ; only here what
thrives is not what is distinctive of the different
European countries, but what is common to them aU.
What America does, not, of course, in a moment, but
with incredible rapidity, is to obUterate distinctions.
The Scotchman, the Irishman, the German, the Scan
dinavian, the ItaUan, even, I suppose, the Czech, drops
his costume, his manner, his language, his traditions, his
beUefs, and retains only his common Western humanity.
Transported to this continent aU the varieties developed
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in Europe revert to the original type, and flourish in un
exampled vigour and force. It is not a new type that
is evolved • it is the fundamental type, growing in a
new soil, in luxuriant profusion. Describe the average
Western man and you describe the American ; from east
to west, from north to south, everywhere and always
the same — masterful, aggressive, unscrupulous, egotistic,
at once good-natured and brutal, kind if you do not
cross him, ruthless if you do, greedy, ambitious, self-
reliant, active for the sake of activity, inteUigent and
uninteUectual, quick-witted and crass, contemptuous
of ideas but amorous of devices, valuing nothing but
success, recognising nothing but the actual, Man in the
concrete, undisturbed by spiritual life, the master of
methods and slave of things, and therefore the con
queror of the world, the unquestioning, the undoubting,
the chud with the muscles of a man, the European
stripped bare, and shown for what he is, a predatory,
unreflecting, naif, precociously accomplished brute.
One does not then find in America anything one does
not find in Europe ; but one finds in Europe what one
does not find in America. One finds, as weU as the
average, what is below and what is above it. America
has, broadly speaking, no waste products. The wreckage,
everywhere evident in Europe, is not evident there. Men
do not lose their self-respect, they win it ; they do not
drop out, they work in. This is the great result not of
American institutions or ideas, but of American oppor-
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THE "DIVINE AVERAGE"
tunities. It is the poor immigrant who ought to sing
the praises of this continent. He alone has the proper
point of view ; and he, unfortunately, is dumb. But
often, when I have contemplated with dreary disgust,
in the outskirts of New York, the hideous wooden
shanties planted askew in wastes of garbage, and re
membered Naples or Genoa or Venice, suddenly it has
been borne in upon me that the Italians living there
feel that they have their feet on the ladder leading to
paradise ; that for the first time they have before
them a prospect and a hope ; and that whfle they have
lost, or are losing, their manners, their beauty and their
charm, they have gained something which, in their
eyes, and perhaps in reality, more than compensates
for losses they do not seem to feel, they have gained
self-respect, independence, and the aUure of the open
horizon. " The vision of America," a friend writes,
" is the vision of the lifting up of the miUions." This,
I beUeve, is true, and it is America's great contri
bution to civilisation. I do not forget it ; but neither
shaU I dwell upon it ; for though it is, I suppose, the
most important thing about America, it is not what
I come across in my own experience. What strikes
more often and more directly home to me is the
other fact that America, if she is not burdened by
masses lying below the average, is also not inspired
by an £lite rising above it. Her distinction is the
absence of distinction. No wonder Walt Whitman
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APPEARANCES
sang the " Divine Average." There was nothing else in
America for him to sing. But he should not have
caUed it divine j he should have caUed it " human, aU
too human."
Or is it divine ? Divine somehow in its potentia-
Uties ? Divine to a deeper vision than mine ? I was
writing this at Brooklyn, in a room that looks across
the East River to New York. And after putting down
those words, " human, aU too human," I stepped out on
to the terrace. Across the gulf before me went shooting
forward and back interminable rows of fiery shuttles ;
and on its surface seemed to float blazing basilicas.
Beyond rose into the darkness a dazzling tower of light,
dusking and shimmering, primrose and green, up to a
diadem of gold. About it hung galaxies and constel
lations, outshining the firmament of stars ; and aU the
air was fuU of strange voices, more than human, inge
minating Babylonian oracles out of the bosom of night.
This is New York. This it is that the average man
has done, he knows not why ; this is the symbol of his
work, so much more than himself, so much more than
what seems to be itself in the common light of day.
America does not know what she is doing, neither do
I know, nor any man. But the impulse that drives
her, so mean and poor to the critic's eye, has perhaps
more significance in the eye of God ; and the optimism
of this continent, so seeming-frivolous, is justified, may
be, by reason lying beyond its ken.
[152]

II
A CONTINENT OF PIONEERS
The American, I said, in the previous letter, is the average
Western man. It should be added, he is the average
man in the guise of pioneer. Much that surprises or
shocks Europeans in the American character is to be
explained, I believe, by this fact. Among pioneers
the individual is everything and the society nothing.
Every man relies on himself and on his personal rela
tions. He is a friend, and an enemy ; he is never a
citizen. Justice, order, respect, for law, honesty even
and honour are to him mere abstract names ; what is
real is intelligence and force, the service done or the
injury inflicted, the direct emotional reaction to persons
and deeds. . And stiU, as it seems to the foreign observer,
even in the long-settled east, stiU more in the west,
this attitude prevails. To the American politician or
business man, that a thing is right or wrong, legal or
iUegal, seems a pale and irrelevant consideration. The
real question is, wiU it pay ? wiU it please TheophUus
P. Polk or vex Harriman Q. Kunz ? If it is iUegal,
wiU it be detected ? If detected, wiU it be prosecuted ?
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What are our resources for evading or defeating the
law ? And aU this with good temper and good con
science. What stands in the way, says the pioneer,
must be swept out of it ; no matter whether it be the
moral or the civil law, a public authority or a rival in
business. "The strong business man" has no use for
scruples. Public or social considerations do not appeal
to him. Or if they do present themselves, he satisfies
himself with the belief that, from activities so strenuous
and remarkable as his, Good must result to the com
munity. If he break the law, that is the fault of the
law, for being stupid and obstructive j if he break
individuals, that is their fault for being weak. Vae
victisl Never has that principle, or rather instinct,
ruled more paramount than it does in America.
To say this, is to say that American society is the
most individualistic in the modern world. This foUows
naturaUy from the whole situation of the country.
The pioneer has no object save to get rich ; the govern
ment of pioneers has no object save to develop the
country quickly. To this object everything is sacri
ficed, including the interests of future generations. All
new countries have taken the most obvious and easy
course. They have given away for nothing, or for a
song, the whole of their natural resources to anybody
who wiU undertake to exploit them. And those who
have appropriated this wealth have judged it to be
theirs by a kind of natural right. " These farms,
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A CONTINENT OF PIONEERS
mines, forests, oilsprings — of course they are ours.
Did not we discover them? Did not we squat upon
them ? Have we not ' mixed our labour with them ' ? "
If pressed as to the claims of later comers they would
probably reply that there remains " as much and as
good" for others. And this of course is true for a
time ; but for a very short time, even when it is a
continent that is being divided up. Practically the
whole territory of the United States is now in private
ownership. StiU, the owners have made such good use of
their opportunities that they have created innumerable
opportunities for non-owners. Artisans get good wages ;
lawyers make fortunes ; stock and share holders get
high dividends. Every one feels that he is flourishing,
and flourishing by his own efforts. He has no need
to combine with his feUows ; or, if he does combine, is
ready to desert them in a moment when he sees his
own individual chance.
But this is only a phase ; and inevitably, by the
logic of events, there supervenes upon it another on
which, it would appear, America is just now entering.
With aU her natural resources distributed among indi
viduals or corporations, and with the tide of immi
gration unchecked, she begins to feel the first stress of
the situation of which the tension in Europe has already
become almost intolerable. It is the situation which
cannot faU to result from the system of private pro
perty and inheritance estabUshed throughout the
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APPEARANCES
Western world. Opportunities diminish, classes segre
gate. There arises a caste of wage-earners never to be
anything but wage-earners ; a caste of property-owners,
handing on their property to their descendants; and
substantiaUy, after aU deductions have been made for
exaggeration and simplification, a division of society into
capitalists and proletarians. American society is begin
ning to crystaUise out into the forms of European
society. For, once more, America is nothing new ; she
is a repetition of the old on a larger scale. And,
curiously, she is less " new " than the other new
countries. Australia and New Zealand for years past
have been trying experiments in social poUcy ; they are
determined to do what they can to prevent the recur
rence there of the European situation. But in America,
there is no sign of such tendencies. The poUtical and
social philosophy of the United States is stiU that of
the early EngUsh individualists. And, no doubt, there
are adequate causes, if not good reasons for this. The
immense wealth and size of the country, the huge
agricultural population, the proportionally smaUer
aggregation in cities has maintained in the mass of the
people what I have caUed the " pioneer " attitude.
Opportunity has been, and stiU is, more open than in
any other country ; and, in consequence, there has
hardly emerged a definite " working class " with a
class consciousness. This, however, is a condition that
cannot be expected to continue. America will develop
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A CONTINENT OF PIONEERS
on the lines of Europe, because she has European insti
tutions ; and " labour " wiU assert itself more and
more as an independent factor in politics.
Whether it wfll assert itself successfully is another
matter. At present, as is notorious, American politics
are controUed by wealth, more completely, perhaps, than
those of any other country, even of England. The
" corporations " make it a main part of their business to
capture Congress, the Legislatures, the Courts and the
city governments ; and they are eminently successful.
The smaUest country town has its " boss," in the
employ of the Railway ; the Public Service Corporations
control the cities ; and the protected interests dominate
the Senate. Business governs America ; and business
does not include labour. In no civilised country
except Japan is labour-legislation so undeveloped as in
the States ; in none is capital so uncontrolled ; in none
is justice so openly prostituted to wealth. America is
the paradise of plutocracy ; for the rich there enjoy
not only a real power but a social prestige such as can
hardly have been accorded to them even in the worst
days of the Roman Empire. Great fortunes and their
owners are regarded with a respect as naif and as
intense as has ever been conceded to birth in Europe.
No American youth of ambition, I am told, leaves
cpUege with any less or greater purpose in his heart
than that of emulating Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rocke-
feUer. And, on the other hand, it must be conceded,
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rich men feel an obligation to dispose of their wealth for
public purposes, to a degree quite unknown in Europe.
By these lavish gifts the people are dazzled. They
feel that the millionaire has paid his ransom ; and are
ready to forgive irregularities in the process of acquiring
wealth when they are atoned for by such splendid
penance. Thus the rich man in America comes to
assume the position of a kind of popular dictator. He
is admired on account of his prowess and forgiven on
account of his beneficence. And, since every one feels
that one day he may have the chance of imitating him,
no one judges him too severely. He is regarded not as
the " exploiter," the man grown fat on the labour of
others. Rather he is the type, the genius of the Ameri
can people ; and they point to him with pride as " one
of our strong men," "one of our conservative men of
business." Individualism, then, is stronger and deeper rooted
in America than elsewhere. And, it must be added,
sociaUsm is weaker. It is an imported article, and it
does not thrive on the new soU. The formulae of Marx
are even less congenial to the American than to the
EngUsh mind ; and American conditions have not yet
given rise to a native socialism, based on local conditions
and adapted to local habits of thought. Such a native
socialism, I believe, is bound to come before long,
perhaps is arising even now. But I would not hazard
the assertion that it is likely to prevail. America, it
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A CONTINENT OF PIONEERS
would seem, stands at the parting of the ways. Either
she may develop on democratic lines ; and Democracy,
as I think, demonstrably impUes some kind of socialism.
Or she may fossiUse in the form of her present Pluto
cracy, and realise that new feudalism of industry which
was dreamt of by Saint-Simon, by Comte, and by
Carlyle. It would be a strange consummation, but
stranger things have happened ; and it seems more
probable that this should happen in America than that
it should happen in any European country. It is an
error to think of America as democratic ; her Demo
cracy is aU on the surface. But in Europe, Democracy
is penetrating deeper and deeper. And, in particular,
there can be little doubt that England is now more
democratic than the United States.

[159]

Ill
NIAGARA
I shall not describe Niagara ; instead I shaU repeat a
conversation. After a day spent in visiting the faUs and the rapids,
I was sitting to-night on a bench on the river bank.
The racing water-ridges glimmered faintly in the dusk
and the roar of the falls droned in unwavering mono
tony. I feU, I think, into a kind of stupor ; anyhow, I
cannot remember when it was that some one took a
seat beside me, and began to talk. I seemed to wake
and feel him speaking ; and the first remark I definitely
heard was this : " AU America is Niagara." " AU
America is Niagara," the voice repeated — I could see
no face. " Force without direction, noise without
significance, speed without accomplishment. AU day
and aU night the water rushes and roars. I sit and
Usten ; and it does nothing. It is Nature ; and Nature
has no significance. It is we poets who create signi
ficance, and for that reason Nature hates us. She is
afraid of us, for she knows that we condemn her. We
have standards before which she shrinks abashed. But
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NIAGARA
she has her revenge ; for poets are incarnate. She
owns our bodies ; and she hurls us down Niagara with
the rest, with the others that she loves, and that love
her, the virile big- jawed men, trampUng and trampled,
hustling and hustled, working and asking no ques
tions, faUing as water and dispersing as spray. Nature
is force, loves force, wiUs force alone. She hates
the inteUect, she hates the soul, she hates the spirit.
Nietszche understood her aright, Nietszche the arch-
traitor, who spied on the enemy, learned her secrets, and
then went over to her side. Force rules the world."
I must have said something banal about progress, for
the voice broke out :
" There is no progress ! It. is always the same river !
New waves succeed for ever, but always in the old
forms. History teUs, from beginning to end, the same
tale — the victory of the strong over the sensitive, of the
active over the reflective, of intelligence over inteUect.
Rome conquered Greece, the Germans the Italians,
the English the French, and now, the Americans the
world ! What matters the form of the struggle, whether
it be in arms or commerce, whether the victory go to
the sword, or to shoddy, advertisement, and fraud ?
History is the perennial conquest of civilisation by
barbarians. The little islands before us, lovely with
trees and flowers, green oases in the rushing river, it is
but a few years and they wiU be engulfed. So Greece
was swaUowed up; so Italy, and so wiU it be with
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APPEARANCES
England. Not, as your moralists maintain, because of
her vices, but because of her virtues. She is becoming
just, scrupulous, humane, and therefore she is doomed.
Ignoble though she be, she is yet too noble to survive ;
for Germany and America are baser than she. Hark,
Hark to Niagara ! Force, at all costs ! Do you hear
it ? Do you see it ? I can see it, though it is dark.
It is a river of mouths and teeth, of greedy outstretched
hands, of mirthless laughter, of tears and of blood. I
am there, you are there ; we are hurrying over the faU ;
we are going up in spray."
" Yes," I cried as one cries in a nightmare, " and in
that spray hangs the rainbow."
He caught at the phrase. " It is true. The rain
bow hangs in the spray ! It is the type of the Ideal,
hanging always above the Actual, never in it, never
controUing it. We poets make the rainbow ; we do
not shape the world."
" We do not make the rainbow," I said. " The sun
makes it, shining against it. What is the sun ? "
" The sun is the Platonic Good ; it lights the world,
but does not warm it. By its illumination we see the
river in which we are involved ; see and judge, and
condemn, and are swept away. That we can condemn
is our greatness ; by that we are chfldren of the sun.
But our vision is never fruitful. The sun cannot breed
out of matter ; no, not even maggots by kissing carrion.
Between Force and Light, Matter and Good, there is
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NIAGARA
no interchange. Good is not a cause, it is only an
idea." " To iUuminate," I said, " is to transform."
" No ! it is only to reveal ! Light dances on the
surface ; but not the tiniest wave was ever dimpled
or crisped by its rays. Matter alone moves matter ;
and the world is matter. Best not cry, best not even
blaspheme. Pass over the faU in silence. Perhaps,
at the bottom, there is obUvion, It is the best we
can hope, we who see."
And he was gone ! Had there been anyone ? Was
there a real voice ? I do not know. Perhaps it was
only the roar of Niagara. When I returned to the
hotel, I heard that this very afternoon, while I was
sunning myself on one of the islands, a woman had
thrown herself into the rapids and been swept over
the faU. Niagara took her, as it takes a stick or a
stone. Soon it wiU take the civuisation of America,
as it has taken that of the Indians. Centuries wUl
pass, miUenniums wiU pass, mankind wiU have come
and gone, and stiU the "river wiU flow and the sun
shine, and they wiU communicate to one another their
stern immortal joy, in which there is no part for
ephemeral men.

[163]

IV
"THE MODERN PULPIT"
It is a bright July morning. As I sit in the garden I
look out, over a tangle of wild roses, to a calm sea
and a flock of white sails. Everything invites to happy
thought and innocent reverie. Moreover, it is the day
of rest, and every one is at leisure to turn his mind
towards pleasant things. To what, in fact, are most
people on this continent turning theirs ? To this,
which I hold in my hand, the Sunday newspaper.
Let us analyse this production, peculiar to the New
World. It comprises eight sections and eighty-eight
pages, and very likely does really, as it boasts, contain
" more reading matter than the whole Bible."
Opening Section i, I read the following headings :
"Baron Shot as Bank-teUer — Ends Life with
BuUet."
"Two fataUy Hurt in Strike Riots at Pitts
burg."
" Steals a Look at Busy Burglars."
" Drowned in Surf at Narragansett."
" Four of a Family fear a Dogs' bite " (sic).
"Two are Dead, Two Dying ; Fought over Cow."
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"THE MODERN PULPIT"
Section 2 appears to be concerned with similar
matter, for example :
" Struck by Blast, Woman is Dying."
" Hard Shell Crabs help in giving Burglar
Alarm."
" Man who has been Married three times denies
the Existence of God."
But here I notice further the interesting and enig
matic heading :
" WiU ' boost ' not ' knock ' New York,"
and roused for the first time to something like curio
sity, read :
"To lock horns with the muckrakes and to defend
New York against aU who defame and censure it the
Association for New York was incorporated yesterday."
I notice also " Conferences agree to short rates on
woollen goods," and am reminded of the shameless
bargaining of which, for many weeks past, Washington
has been the centre ; which leads me to reflect on the
political advantages of a Tariff and its wholesome
effect, on the national life.
Section 3 deals with Aviation and seaside resorts :
" Brave Lake Placid," I read, " Planning New
Hotel."
" Haines Falls entertaining a Great Throng of
People."
" Resound with the Laughter and Shout of
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Section 4 consists entirely of advertisements :
" Tuning-up Sale," I read. " Buff-and-crimson cards
wiU mark the trail of all goods ready for the sale. We
are tuning up. By September it is our intention to
have assembled in these two great buUdings the most
fashionable merchandise ever shown. No one piece of
goods wiU be permitted to linger that lacks, in any
detafi, the aesthetic beauty demanded by New York
women of fashion. Everything wiU be better and a
definite percentage lower in price than New York wul
find in any othet store. Do not expect a sale of ordinary
proportions. To-morrow you will find the store aUve
with enthusiasm. This is not a summer hurrah."
And so on, to the end of the page. Twelve pages of
advertisements, uninterrupted by any item of news.
Section 5 is devoted to automobile gossip and auto
mobile advertisements.
Thereupon follows the Special Sporting Section :
" Rumsom Freebooters defeat Devon's first."
" ' Young Corbett ' is chipped in the 8th."
" Doggett and Cubs each win shut out."
" Brockett is easy for Detroit Nine."
Glancing at the small type I read : —
" Englewood was the first to tally. This was in the
fourth inning. W. Merritt, the first man up, was safe
on WiUiams' error, and he got round to third on another
miscue by WiUiams. Charley Clough was on deck
with a timely single, which scored Merritt. Curran's
[166]

"THE MODERN PULPIT"
out at first put Clough on third, from whence he tallied
on Cuming's single. Cuming got to second, when
Wiley grounded out along the first base line and scored
on Reinmund's single. Every other time Reinmund
came to the bat he struck out."
I pass to the Magazine Section.
On the first page is the mysterious heading " E. of K.
and E." Several huge portraits of a bald clean-shaven
man in shirt sleeves partiaUy explain. E. is Mr.
Erlanger, a theatrical impresario, and K. and E. pre
sumably is his firm. The article describes " the accom-
pUshment of a busy man on one of his ordinary days,"
and makes one hope no day is ever extraordinary. The
interviewer who teUs about him is almost speechless
with emotion. He searches for a phrase to express his
feeUngs, finds it at last, and comes triumphantly to his
close — Mr. Erlanger is a man " with trained arms,
trained legs, a trained body and a trained mind."
There foUows : " The Story of a Society Girl," in which
we are told " there is a confession of love and the start
ling discovery that DoUy was a professional model " ;
" The Doctor's Story," with a picture of a corpse,
" whose white shapely hands were clasped one over
the other " ; and " Would you Convict on Circum
stantial Evidence ? — A Scaffold Confession. A True
Story." I glance at this, and read, " WMe the crowd
watched in strained, breathless silence there came a
sharp agonised voice and a commotion near the steps
[167]

APPEARANCES
of the scaffold. ' Stop ! Stop ! The man is not
guilty. I mean it. It is I who should stand there.
Let me speak." You can now reconstruct the story
for yourself. Next comes " Get the Man ! Craft and
courage of old-time and modern express robbers matched
by organised secret service and the mandate that
makes capture alone the end of an unflagging man-hunt."
This is accompanied by portraits of famous detectives
and train-robbers.
There follows " Thrilling Lines," with a picture of a
man who seems to be looping the loop on a bicycle.
And the conclusion of the section is a poem, entitled
" Cynthianna Blythe," with coloured illustrations appa
rently intended for children, and certainly successful
in not appealing to adults.
Comment, I suppose, is superfluous. But it is only
fair to say that the whole of the press of America is
not of this character. Among the thousands of papers
daily produced on that continent, it would be possible,
I believe, to name ten — I myself could mention five —
which contain in almost every issue some piece of
information or comment which an inteUigent man
might care to peruse. There are to be found, now and
again, passing references to European and even to
Asiatic politics ; for it cannot be said that the press
of America whoUy ignored the recent revolutions in
Persia and in Turkey. I myself saw a reference to the
new Sultan as a man " fat, but not fleshy." England
[168]

"THE MODERN PULPIT"
looms big enough on the American horizon to be treated
to an occasional gibe ; and the doings of fashionable
Americans in London are reported somewhat fuUy.
StiU, on the whole, the American daily press is typified
by the specimen I have analysed. Sensations, persona
lities and fiction are its stock-in-trade. Why ? The
causes are weU known, but are worth recapitulating,
for they are part of the system of modern civilisation.
The newspaper press is a business intended to make
money. This is its primary aim, which may, or may
not, include the subordinate purpose of advocating some
line of pubUc policy. Now, to make money, it is essential
to secure advertisements ; and to secure advertisements
it is essential to have a large circulation. But a large
circulation can only be obtained by lowering the price
of the paper, and adapting it to the leisure mood of
the mass of people. But this leisure mood is usuaUy
one of sheer vacuity, incapable of inteUectual effort or
imaginative response. The man is there, waiting to be
fiUed, and to be filled with the stuff easiest to digest.
The rest foUows. The newspapers supply the demand
and by supplying extend and perpetuate it. Among
the possible appeals open to them they deliberately
choose the lowest. For people are capable of Good as
weU as of Bad ; and if they cannot get the Bad they wiU
sometimes take the Good. Newspapers, probably,
could exist, even under democratic conditions, by
maintaining a certain standard of intelligence and
[169]

APPEARANCES
morals. But it is easier to exist on melodrama, fatuity
and sport. And one or two papers adopting that
course force the others into line ; for here, as in so
many departments of modern life, "The Bad drives
out the Good." This process of deterioration of the
press is proceeding rapidly in England, with the advent
of the halfpenny newspaper. It has not gone so far as in
America ; but there is no reason why it should not,
and every reason why it should ; for the same causes
are at work.
I have caUed the process " deterioration," but that,
of course, is matter of opinion. A Cabinet Minister, at
a recent Conference in London, is reported to have
congratulated the press on its progressive improvement
during recent years. And Lord Northcliffe is a peer.
The more the English press approximates to the
American, the more, it would seem, it may hope for
public esteem and honour. And that is natural, for
the American method pays.
Well, the sun still shines and the sky is stiU blue.
But between it and the American people stretches a
veU of printed paper. Curious ! the fathers of this
nation read nothing but the Bible. That too, it may
be said, was a veil ; but a veil woven of apocalyptic
visions, of lightning and storm, of Leviathan, and the
wrath of Jehovah. What is the stuff of the modern
veU, we have seen. And surely the contrast is cal
culated to evoke curious reflections.
[i7°]

V
IN THE ROCKIES
Walking alone in the mountains to-day I came sud
denly upon the railway. There was a little shanty of
a station 8000 feet above the sea; and, beyond, the
great expanse of the plains. It was beginning to sleet,
and I determined to take shelter. The click of a tele
graph operator told me there was some one inside the
shed. I knocked and knocked again, in vain ; and it was
a quarter of an hour before the door was opened by a
thin, yellow-faced youth chewing gum, who looked at
me without a sign of recognition or a word of greeting.
I have learnt by this time that absence of manners in
an American is intended to signify not surliness but
independence, so I asked to be aUowed to enter. He
admitted me, and resumed his operations. I listened to
the clicking, whfle the sleet feU faster and the evening
began to close in. What messages were they, I wondered,
that were passing across the mountains ? I connected
them, idly enough, with the corner in wheat a famous
speculator was endeavouring to establish in Chicago ;
and reflected upon the disproportion between the
[171]

APPEARANCES
achievements of Man and the use he puts them to.
He invents wireless telegraphy, and the ships caU to
one another day and night, to tell the name of the
latest winner. He is inventing the flying-machine, and
he wiU use it to advertise piUs and drop bombs. And
here, he has exterminated the Indians, and carried his
Unes and his poles across the mountains, that a gambler
may fill his pockets by starving a continent. " Click
— click — click — Pick — pick — pick — Pock —
pock — pockets." So the west caUed to the east, and
the east to the west, while the winds roared, and the
sleet feU, over the solitary mountains and the desolate
iron road.
It was too late now for me to reach my hotel that
evening, and I was obliged to beg a night's rest. The
yeUow youth assented, with his air of elaborate indiffer
ence, and proceeded to make me as comfortable as he
could. About sunset, the storm passed away over the
plains. Behind its flying fringes shot the last rays of
the sun ; and for a moment the prairie sea was all
bared to view, as wide as the sky, as calm and as pro
found, a thousand miles of grass where men and cattle
crept like flies, and towns and houses were swaUowed and
lost in the infinite monotony. We had supper and then
my host began to talk. He was a democrat, and we
discussed the coming presidential election. From one
newspaper topic to another we passed to the talk about
signaHing to Mars. SignaUing interested the youth ;
[172]

IN THE ROCKIES
he knew aU about that ; but he knew nothing about
Mars, or the stars. These were now shining bright
above us ; and I told him what I knew of suns and
planets, of double stars, of the moons, of Jupiter, of
nebulae and the galaxy, and the infinity of space, and
of worlds. He chewed and meditated, and presently
remarked : " Gee ! I guess then it doesn't matter two
cents after all who gets elected president ! " Where
upon we turned in, he to sleep and I to lie awake,
for I was disturbed by the mystery of the stars. It is
long since the notion of infinite space and infinite worlds
has impressed my imagination with anything but dis
comfort and terror. The Ptolemaic scheme was better
suited to human needs. Our religious sense demands
not only order but significance ; a world not merely
great, but relevant to our destinies. Copernicus, it is
true, gave us liberty and space ; but he bereft us of
security and intimacy. And I thought of the great
vision of Dante, so terrible and yet so beautiful, so
human through and through, — that vision which, if it
contracts space, expands the fate of man, and relates
him to the sun and the moon and the stars. I thought
of him as he crossed the Apennines by night, or heard
from the sea at sunset the tinkling of the curfew beU, or
paced in storm the forest of Ravenna, always, beyond
and behind the urgency of business, the chances of war,
the bitterness of exue, aware of the march of the sun
about the earth, of its station in the Zodiac, of the solemn
[173]

APPEARANCES
and intricate wheeling of the spheres. Aware, too, of
the inner Ufe of those bright luminaries, the dance and
song of spirits purged by fire, the glow of Mars, the
milky crystal of the moon, and Jupiter's intolerable
blaze ; and beyond these, kindling these, setting them
their orbits and their order, by attraction not of gravi
tation, but of love, the ultimate Essence, imaged by
purest light and hottest fire, whereby aU things and aU
creatures move in their courses and their fates, to whom
they tend and in whom they rest.
And I recalled the passage :
" Frate, la nostra volonta quieta
Virtu di carita, che fa volerne
Sol quel ch'avemo, e d'altro non ci asseta.
Se disiassimo esser piu superne,
F6ran discordi gli nostri disiri
Dal voler di Colui che qui ne cerne ;
Che vedrai non capere in questi giri,
S'essere in caritate d qui necesse,
E se la sua natura ben rimiri ;
Anzi 6 formale ad esto beato esse
Tenersi dentro alia divina voglia,
Perch'una fansi nostre voglie stesse.
Si che, come noi siam di soglia in soglia
Per questo regno, a tutto il regno piace,
Com'allo re, che in suo voler ne invoglia.
E la sua volontade e nostra pace :
Ella 6 quel mare al qual tutto si muove
Cio ch' ella crea o che natura face." x
1 " Brother, the quality of love stilleth our will, and maketh us
long only for what we have, and giveth us no other thirst.
[174]

IN THE ROCKIES
And then, with a leap, I was back to what we call
reality — to the clicking needle, to the corner in wheat,
to Chicago and Pittsburg and New York. In aU this
continent, I thought, in aU the western world, there is
not a human soul whose wiU seeks any peace at all,
least of aU the peace of God. AU move, but about no
centre ; they move on, to more power, to more wealth,
to more motion. There is not one of them who con
ceives that he has a place, if only he could find it, a
rank and order fitted to his nature, higher than some,
lower than others, but right, and the only right for him,
his true position in the cosmic scheme, his ultimate
relation to the Power whence it proceeds. Life, Uke
astronomy, has become Copernican. It has no centre,
no significance, or, if any, one beyond our ken. Gravi
tation drives us, not love. We are attracted and

" Did we desire to be more aloft, our longings were discordant
from his will who here assorteth us,
" And for that, thou wilt see, there is no room within these
circles, if of necessity we have our being here in love, and if thou
think again what is love's nature.
" Nay, 'tis the essence of this blessed being to hold ourselves
within the divine will, whereby our own wills are themselves
made one.
"So that our being thus.from threshold unto threshold, through
out the realm, is a joy to all the realm as to the King, who draweth
our wills to what he willeth ;
" And his will is our peace ; it is that sea to which all moves that
it createth and that nature maketh."
Dante, Purgatorio, iii. 70-87 (trans, by Rev. Philip H.
Wicksteed, in the " Temple Classics " edition),
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APPEARANCES
repeUed by a force we cannot control, a force that
resides in our muscles and our nerves, not in our will
and spirit. " Click — click — click — tick — tick —
tick," so goes the economic clock. And that clock, with
its siUy face, has shut us out from the stars. It teUs
us the time ; but behind the dial of the hours is now
for us no vision of the solemn wheeling spheres, of spirit
flames and that ultimate point of light " pinnacled dim
in the intense inane." " America is a clock," I said ;
and then I remembered the phrase, " America is
Niagara." And like a flake of foam, dizzy and lost, I
was swept away, out into the infinite, out into uncon
sciousness. The sun was shining brightly when I woke, and I had
slept away my mood of the night. I took leave of my
host, and under his directions, after half a mile along
the Une, plunged down into a gorge, and foUowed for
mUes, crossing and re-crossing, a mountain brook, be
tween cliffs of red rocks, by fields of mauve anemones,
in the shadow and fragrance of pines ; tiU suddenly,
after hours of rough going, I was confronted by a
notice, set up, apparently, in the desert :
" Keep out. Avoid trouble. This means you."
I laughed. " Keep out ! " I said. " If only there
were a chance of my getting in ! " " Avoid trouble !
Ah, what trouble would I not face, could I but get in ! "
[176]

IN THE ROCKIES
And I went on, but not in, and met no trouble, and
returned to the hotel, and had dinner, and watched
for a solitary hour, in the haU, the shifting interminable
array of vacant eyes and blank faces, and then retired
to write this letter ; " and so to bed."

[ 177 ] m

VI
IN THE ADIRONDACKS
For the last few days I have been Uving in camp on a
mountain lake in the Adirondacks. AU about me are
mountains and unlumbered forest. The tree lies where
it faUs ; the undergrowth chokes the trails ; and on
the hottest day it is cool in the green, sun-chequered
wilderness. Deer start in the thickets or steal down
to drink in the lake. The only sounds are the wood
pecker's scream, the song of the hermit-thrush, the
thrumming and drumming of buU-frogs in the water.
My friend is a sportsman ; I am not ; and while he
catches trout I have been reading Homer and SheUey.
SheUey I have always understood ; but now, for the
first time, I seem to understand Homer. Our guide
here, I feel, might have been Homer, if he had had
imagination ; but he could never have been SheUey.
Homer, I conceive, had from the first the normal bent
for action. What his feUows did he too wanted to do.
He learned to hunt, to sail a boat, to build a house, to
use a spear and bow. He had his initiation early, in
conflict, in danger, and in death. He loved the feast,
[178]

IN THE ADIRONDACKS
the dance, and the song. But also he had dreams.
He used to sit alone and think. And, as he grew,
these moods grew, tiU he came to live a second life,
a kind of double of the first. The one was direct, un-
reflective, and purposeful. In it he hunted wUd beasts
that he might kiU them, fought battles that he might
win them, sailed boats that he might arrive somewhere.
So far, he was Uke his feUows, and like our guide, with
his quick observation, his varied experience, his prac
tical skiU. But then, on the other hand, he had imagi
nation. This active life he reproduced ; not by recapi
tulating it — that the guide can do ; but by recreating
it. He detached it, as it were, from himself as centre ;
ceased, indeed, to be a self ; and became all that he
contemplated — the victor and the vanquished, the
hunter and the hunted, the house and its builder,
Thersites and AchiUes. He became the sun and the
moon and the stars, the gods and the laughter of the
gods. He took no sides, pronounced no judgment,
espoused no cause. He became pure vision ; but not
passive vision. To see, he had to re-create ; and the
material his observation had amassed he offered up
as a holocaust on the altar of his imagination. Fused
in that fierce fire, like drew to like, parts ran together
and formed a whole. Did he see a warrior faU ?
In a moment the image arose of " a stately poplar
faUing by the axe in a meadow by the riverside." Did
a host move out to meet the foe ? It recaUed the
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APPEARANCES
ocean shore where " wave foUows wave far out at sea
untU they break in thunder on the beach." Was
battle engaged ? " The clash of the weapons rang like
the din of woodcutters in the mountain-glades." Did
a wounded hero faU ? The combatants gathered about
him " like flies buzzing round the brimming milk-pails
in the spring." All commonest things, redeemed from
isolation and irrelevance, revealed the significance with
which they were charged. The result was the actual
made real, a reflexion which was a disclosure, a repro
duction which was a recreation. And if experience, as
we know it, is the last word of life, if there is nothing
beyond and nothing behind, if there is no meaning, no
explanation, no purpose or end, then the poetry of
Homer is the highest reach of human achievement.
For, observe, Homer is not a critic. His vision trans
mutes Ufe, but does not transcend it. Experience is
ultimate ; aU the poet does is to experience fuUy.
Common men live, but do not realise life ; he realises it.
But he does not question it ; it is there and it is final ;
glorious, lovely, august, terrible, sordid, cruel, unjust.
And the partial, smiling, unmoved, unaccountable
Olympians are the symbol of its brute actuality. Not
only is there no explanation, there is not even a question
to be asked. So it is, so it has been, so it wiU be.
Homer's outlook is that of the modern realist. That he
wrote an epic, and they novels, is an accident of time
and space. Turgeneff or Balzac writing iooo years
[180]

IN THE ADIRONDACKS
before Christ would have been Homer; and Homer,
writing now, would have been Turgeneff or Balzac.
But SheUey could never have been Homer ; for he
was born a critic and a rebel. From the first dawn of
consciousness he chaUenged and defied the works and
ways of men and the apparent order of the universe.
Never for a moment anywhere was he at home in the
world. There was nothing attainable he cared to
pursue, nothing actual he cared to represent. He
could no more see what is caUed fact than he could
act upon it. His eyes were dazzled by a different
vision. Life and the world not only are intolerable to
him, they are unreal. Beyond and behind lies Reality,
and it is good. Now it is a Perfectibility lying in the
future; now a Perfection existing eternaUy. In any
case, whatever it be, however and wherever to be
found, it is the sole object of his quest and of his song.
Whatever of good or lovely or passionate gleams here
and there, on the surface or in the depths of the actual,
is a ray of that Sun, an image of that Beauty. His
imagination is kindled by Appearance only to soar
away from it. The landscape he depicts is aU Ught,
all fountains and caverns. The Beings with which it
is peopled are discarnate Joys and Hopes ; Justice and
Liberty, Peace and Love and Truth. Among these
only is he at home ; in the world of men he is an aUen
captive ; and Human Life presents itself as an " un
quiet dream." [181]

APPEARANCES
" 'Tis we that, lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings."
When we die, we awake into Reality — that ReaUty to
which, from the beginning, Shelley was consecrated :
" I vowed, that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine — have I not kept my vow ? "
He caUs it " inteUectual Beauty " ; he impersonates it
as Asia, and sings it in verse that passes beyond sense
into music :
" Life of Life 1 thy lips enkindle
With their love the breath between them ;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire ; then screen them
In those looks, where whoso gazes
Faints, entangled in their mazes.
Child of Light 1 thy limbs are burning
Through the vest which seems to hide them ;
As the radiant lines of morning
Through the clouds ere they divide them ;
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.
Fair are others ; none beholds thee,
But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee
From the sight, that liquid splendour,
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now, lost for ever I
Lamp of Earth I where'er thou movest
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,
[182]

IN THE ADIRONDACKS
And the souls of whom thou lovest
Walk upon the winds with lightness,
Till they fail, as I am failing,
Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing ! "
This we caU poetry ; and we caU the IUad poetry.
But the Ukeness is superficial, and the difference pro
found. Was it Homer or SheUey that grasped Reality ?
This is not a question of literary excellence ; it is a
question of the sense of life. And — oddly enough — it is
a question to which the inteUect has no answer. The
life in each of us takes hold of it and answers it empiri-
caUy. The normal man is Homeric, though he is not
aware of the fact. EspeciaUy is the American Homeric ;
naif, spontaneous, at home with fact, impUcitly denying
the Beyond. Is he right ? This whole continent, the
prairies, the mountains and the coast, the trams and
troUeys, the sky-scrapers, the factories, elevators, auto-
mobfies, shout to that question one long deafening Yes.
But there is another country that speaks a different
tongue. Before America was, India is.

[183]

VII
THE RELIGION OF BUSINESS
In the house in which I am staying hangs an old
coloured print, representing two couples, one young
and lusty, the other decrepit, the woman carrying an
hour-glass, the man leaning on a stick ; and underneath,
the foUowing inscription :
" My father and mother that go so stuping to your grave,
Pray tell me what good I may in this world expect to
have ? "
" My son, the good y° can expect is all forlorn,
Men doe not gather grapes from of a thorn."
This dialogue, I sometimes think, symbolises the
attitude of the new world to the old, and the old to
the new. Not seldom I feel among Americans as the
Egyptian is said to have felt among the Greeks, that
I am moving in a world of precocious and inexperi
enced children, bearing on my own shoulders the weight
of the centuries. Yet it is not exactly that Americans
strike one as young in spirit ; rather they strike one as
undeveloped. It is as though they had never faced
life and asked themselves what it is ; as though they
[184]

THE RELIGION OF BUSINESS
were so occupied in running that it has never occurred
to them to inquire where they started and whither
they are going. They seem to be always doing and
never experiencing. A dimension of life, one would
say, is lacking, and they live in a plane instead of in
a sofid. That missing dimension I shaU caU religion.
Not that Americans do not, for aught I know, " believe "
as much as or more than Europeans ; but they appear
neither to believe nor to disbelieve religiously. That, I
admit, is true almost everywhere of the mass of the
people. But even in Europe — and far more in India —
there has always been, and stiU is, a minority who open
windows to the stars ; and through these windows, in
passing, the plain man sometimes looks. The impres
sion America makes on me is that the windows are
blocked up. It has become incredible that this con
tinent was colonised by the PUgrim Fathers. That
intense, narrow, unlovely but genuine spiritual life has
been transformed into industrial energy ; and this
energy, in its new form, the churches, oddly enough,
are endeavouring to recapture and use to drive their
machines. Religion is becoming a department of
practical business. The Churches — orthodox and un
orthodox, old and new, Christian, Christian-Scientific,
theosophic, higher-thinking — vie with one another in ad
vertising goods which are aU material benefits : " FoUow
me, and you wiU get rich," " FoUow me, and you wiU get
weU," " FoUow me, and you wiU be cheerful, prosperous,
[185]

APPEARANCES
successful." Religion in America is nothing if not
practical. It does not concern itself with a Ufe beyond ;
it gives you here and now what you want. " What
do you want? Money? Come along! — Success? This
is the shop 1 — Health ? Here you are ! Better than
patent medicines ! " The only part of the Gospels one
would suppose that interests the modern American is
the miracles ; for the miracles reaUy did do something.
As for the Sermon on the Mount — weU, no Westerner
ever took that seriously.
This conversion of religion into business is interesting
enough. But even more striking is what looks like a
conversion of business into religion. Business is so
serious that it sometimes assumes the shriU tone of a
revivaUst propaganda. There has recently been brought
to my attention a circular addressed to the agents of an
insurance society, urging them to raUy round the firm,
with a special effort, in what I can only caU a " mission-
month." I quote — with apologies to the unknown
author — part of this production :
The Call to Action.
" How about these beautiful spring days for hustUng ?
Everything is on the move. New Ufe and force is
apparent everywhere. The man who can stand stUl
when aU creation is on the move is literaUy and hope
lessly a dead one.
"These are ideal days for the insurance field-man.
[186]

THE RELIGION OF BUSINESS
Weather Uke this has a tremendously favourable effect
on business. In the city and small town alike there
is a genuine revival of business. The farmer, the
merchant, the manufacturer, are beginning to work
overtime. Spring is in the footstep of the ambitious
man as weU as in the onward march of nature. This is
the day of growth, expansion, creation, and re-creation.
" Consciously or unconsciously every one responds to
the glad caU to new life and vigour. Men who are cold
and selfish, who are literaUy frozen up the winter through,
yield to the warm, invigorating, energising touch of spring.
"Gentlemen of the field force, now is the psycho
logical moment to force your prospects to action as
indicated by the dotted Une. As in nature, some plants
and trees are harder to force than others, so in the
nature of human prospects, some are more difficult
than others. Sunshine and rain wiU produce results in
the field of life-underwriting.
" WUl it not be possible for you during these five re
maining days not only to increase the production from
regular sources, but to go out into the highways and
hedges and compel others to sign their appUcations,
if for only a smaU amount ?
" Everything is now in fuU swing, and we are going
to close up the month
"IN A BLAZE OF GLORY."
Might not this almost as weU have been an address
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APPEARANCES
from the headquarters of the Salvation Army ? And
is not the foUowing exactly paraUel to a denunciation,
from the mission-pulpit, of the unprofitable servant ?
" A few days ago we heard of a general agent who has
one of the largest and most prosperous territories in
this country. He has been in the business for years,
and yet that man, for some unknown reason, rather
apologises for his vocation. He said he was a little
ashamed of his caUing. Such a condition is almost
a crime, and I am sure that the men of the Eastern
Department wiU say, that man ought to get out of the
business. " Instead of being ashamed of his calling, he should be
mortally ashamed of his not calling.
" Are you happy in your work ? If not, give it up and
go into some business more to your liking."
Why Is It ?
" So many times the question is asked, ' Why is it,
and how is it, that Mr. So-and-so writes so much busi
ness ? There is not a week but he procures new appli
cations.' Gentlemen, there's but one answer to this
question. There is a great gulf between the man who
is in earnest and works persistently every day and the
man who seems to be in earnest and makes believe he
is working persistently every day.
" One of the most successful personal producers said
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THE RELIGION OF BUSINESS
to the writer the other day: 'No wonder certain
agents do not write more business. I couldn't accom-
pUsh very much either if I did not work longer hours
than they do. Some insurance agents live like miUion-
aires and keep bankers' hours. You cannot expect
much business from efforts Uke that.' This man
speaks from practical knowledge of the business. He
has written
$147,500 in personal business in the last six weeks.
" It does seem rather strange, sometimes, that half of
the men in the Eastern Department should be writing
twice as much business as the other half. They are
representing the same company ; presenting the same
propositions ; are supposed to be talking to practicaUy
the same number of men ; have the same rates, same
guarantees, and the same twenty-four . hours in each
day, and yet are doing twice the business. In other
words, making more money. What reaUy makes this
difference ? I wiU teU you. They put heart into
their work. There is an enthusiasm and earnestness
about them that carries conviction. They are business
through and through, and everybody knows it.
" Are you getting your share of appUcations ? If some
other agent is up early, wide-awake and alert, putting
in from ten to fifteen hours per day, he is bound to do
business, isn't he ? This is a plain, every-day horse-
sense business fact. No one has a patent on time or the
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APPEARANCES
use of it. To work and to succeed is common property.
It is your capital, and the use of it wiU determine your
worth." I think, reaUy, this is one of the most remarkable
documents that could be produced in evidence of the
character of American civilisation. There is all the
push, initiative, and enterprise on which they justly
pride themselves; there is also the reduction of all
values to terms of business, the concentration of what,
at other times, have been moral and religious forces
upon the one aim of material progress. In such an
atmosphere it is easy to see how those who care for
spiritual values are led to protest that these are reaUy
material ; to pack up their goods, so to speak, as if
they were biscuits or pork, and palm them off in that
guise on an unsuspecting public. In a world where
every one is hustling, the Churches feel they must
hustle too ; when aU the firms advertise, they must
advertise too ; when only one thing is valued, power,
they must pretend they can offer power ; they must
go into business, because business is going into re
ligion 1
It is a curious spectacle 1 How long wiU it last ?
How real is it, even now ? That withered couple, I
half believe, hanging on the wall, descend at night
and wander through the land, whispering to all the
sleepers their disquieting warning ; and aU day long
there hovers at the back of the minds of these
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THE RELIGION OF BUSINESS
active men a sense of discomfort which, if it
became articulate, might express itself in the ancient
words : " My son, the good y° can expect is all forlorn,
Men doe not gather grapes from of a thorn."

[191]

VIII
RED-BLOODS AND "MOLLYCODDLES"
I am staying at a pleasant place in New Hampshire.
The country is hiUy and wooded, like a larger and
wUder Surrey ; and through it flows what, to an English
man, seems a large river, the Connecticut. Charming
viUas are dotted about, weU designed and secluded in
pretty gardens. I mention this because, in my experi
ence of America, it is unique. Almost everywhere the
houses stare blankly at one another and at the public
roads, ugly, unsheltered, and unashamed, as much as to
say, " Every one is welcome to see what goes on here.
We court publicity. See how we eat, drink, and sleep.
Our private life is the property of the American poeple."
It was not, however, to describe the country that I
began this letter, but to elaborate a generalisation
developed by my host and myself as a kind of self-
protection against the gospel of " strenuousness."
We have divided men into Red-bloods and MoUy-
coddles. " A Red-blood man " is a phrase which
explains itself, " Mollycoddle " is its opposite. We
have adopted it from a famous speech of Mr. Roosevelt,
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RED-BLOODS AND " MOLLYCODDLES "
and redeemed it — perverted it, if you will — to other
uses. A few examples will make the notion clear.
Shakespeare's Henry V. is a typical Red-blood; so
was Bismarck ; so was Palmerston ; so is almost any
business man. On the other hand, typical MoUycoddles
were Socrates, Voltaire, and SheUey. The terms, you
wiU observe, are comprehensive, and the types very
broad. Generally speaking, men of action are Red-
bloods. Not but what the MoUycoddle may act, and
act efficiently. But, if so, he acts from principle, not
from the instinct of action. The Red-blood, on the
other hand, acts as the stone faUs, and does indis
criminately anything that comes to hand. It is thus
he that carries on the business of the world. He steps
without reflection into the first place offered him and
goes to work Uke a machine. The ideals and standards
of his faimly, his class, his city, his country and his
age, he swaUows as naturaUy as he swaUows food and
drink. He is therefore always " in the swim " ; and
he is bound to " arrive," because he has set before
himself the attainable. You wiU find him everywhere
in aU the prominent positions. In a miUtary age he is
a soldier, in a commercial age a business man. He
hates his enemies, and he may love his friends ; but he
does not require friends to love. A wife and chUdren
he does require, for the instinct to propagate the race
is as strong in him as aU other instincts. His domestic
life, however, is not always happy ; for he can seldom
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APPEARANCES
understand his wife. This is part of his general in
capacity to understand any point of view but his
own. He is incapable of an idea and contemptuous of
a principle. He is the Samson, the blind force, dearest
to Nature of her children. He neither looks back nor
looks ahead. He fives in present action. And when
he can no longer act, he loses his reason for existence.
The Red-blood is happiest if he dies in the prime of
life ; otherwise, he may easily end with suicide. For
he has no inner life; and when the outer Ufe fans,
he can only fail with it. The instinct that animated
him being dead, he dies too. Nature, who has blown
through him, blows elsewhere. His stops are dumb ;
he is dead wood on the shore.
The MoUycoddle, on the other hand, is aU inner
life. He may indeed act, as I said, but he acts, so to
speak, by accident ; just as the Red-blood may reflect,
but reflects by accident. The MoUycoddle in action
is the Crank : it is he who accomplishes reforms ; who
abolished slavery, for example, and revolutionised
prisons and lunatic asylums. StiU, primarily, the
MoUycoddle is a critic, not a man of action. He
chaUenges aU standards and aU facts. If an institution
is established, that is a reason why he wiU not accept
it ; if an idea is current, that is a reason why he should
repudiate it. He questions everything, including life
and the universe. And for that reason Nature hates him.
On the Red-blood she heaps her favours; she gives
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RED-BLOODS AND " MOLLYCODDLES "
him a good digestion, a clear complexion, and sound
nerves. But to the MoUycoddle she apportions dyspep
sia and black bfie. In the universe and in society the
MoUycoddle is " out of it " as inevitably as the Red-
blood is " in it." At school, he is a " smug " or a
" swat," whUe the Red-blood is captain of the Eleven.
At coUege, he is an " inteUectual," while the Red-blood
is in the " best set." In the world, he courts failure
while the Red-blood achieves success. The Red-blood
sees nothing ; but the MoUycoddle sees through every
thing. The Red-blood joins societies ; the MoUy
coddle is a non-joiner. Individualist of individualists,
he can only stand alone, while the Red-blood requires
the support of a crowd. The MoUycoddle engenders
ideas, and the Red-blood exploits them. The MoUy
coddle discovers, and the Red-blood invents. The
whole structure of civilisation rests on foundations
laid by MoUycoddles ; but all the building is done by
Red-bloods. The Red-blood despises the Mollycoddle ;
but, in the long run, he does what the Mollycoddle tells
him. The MoUycoddle also despises the Red-blood,
but he cannot do without him. Each thinks he is
master of the other, and, in a sense, each is right. In
his Ufetime the MoUycoddle may be the slave of the
Red-blood ; but after his death, he is his master,
though the Red-blood know it not.
Nations, Uke men, may be classified roughly as Red-
blood and Mollycoddle. To the latter class belong
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APPEARANCES
clearly the ancient Greeks, the Italians, the French,
and probably the Russians ; to the former the Romans,
the Germans, and the EngUsh. But the Red-blood
nation par excellence is the American ; so that, in
comparison with them, Europe as a whole might almost
be called MoUycoddle. This characteristic of Ameri
cans is reflected in the predominant physical type, —
the great jaw and chin, the huge teeth, and predatory
mouth ; in their speech, where beauty and distinction
are sacrificed to force ; in their need to live and feel
and act in masses. To be born a Mollycoddle in America
is to be born to a hard fate. You must either emigrate
or succumb. This, at least, hitherto has been the
alternative practised. Whether a MoUycoddle wiU ever
be produced strong enough to breathe the American
atmosphere and live, is a crucial question for the
future. It is the question whether America wiU ever
be civilised. For civilisation, you wiU have perceived,
depends on a just balance of Red-bloods and MoUy
coddles. Without the Red-blood there would be no
life at aU, no stuff, so to speak, for the MoUycoddle to
work upon ; without the MoUycoddle, the stuff would
remain shapeless and chaotic. The Red-blood is the
matter, the MoUycoddle the form ; the Red-blood the
dough, the MoUycoddle the yeast. On these two poles
turns the orb of human society. And if, at this point,
you choose to say that poles are points and have no
dimensions, that strictly neither the MoUycoddle nor
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RED-BLOODS AND " MOLLYCODDLES "
the Red-blood exist, and that real men contain elements
of both mixed in different proportions, I have no
quarrel with you except such as one has with the man
who states the obvious. I am satisfied to have dis
tinguished the ideal extremes between which the Actual
vibrates. The detailed application of the conception
I must leave to more patient researchers.
One point more before I close. This Dichotomy, so
far as I can see, applies only to man. Woman appears
to be a kind of hybrid. Regarded as a creature of
instinct, she resembles the Red-blood, and it is to him
that she is first attracted. The hero of her youth is
the athlete, the soldier, the successful man of business ;
and this predilection of hers accounts for much of
human history, and in particular for the maintenance
of the military spirit. On the other hand, as a creature
capable of and craving sympathy, she has affinities
with the MoUycoddle. This dual nature is the tragedy
of her life. The Red-blood awakens her passion, but
cannot satisfy it. He wins her by his virility, but
cannot retain her by his perception. Hence the fact,
noted by a cynic, that it is the Mollycoddle who
cuckolds the Red-blood. For the woman, married to
the Red-blood, discovers too late that she is to him
only a trophy, a scalp. He hangs her up in the hall,
and goes about his business. ' Then comes the MoUy
coddle, divining aU, possessing and offering aU. And
if the Red-blood is an American, and the Mollycoddle
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APPEARANCES
an European, then the situation is tense indeed. For
the American Red-blood despises woman in his heart
as profoundly as he respects her in outer observance.
He despises her because of the Mollycoddle he divines
in her. Therefore he never understands her ; and that
is why European MoUycoddles carry off American
women before the very eyes of the exasperated Red-
blood. " Am I not clean ? " he cries. " Am I not
healthy ? Am I not athletic and efficient ? " He is,
but it does not help him, except with young girls. He
may win the body ; but he cannot win the soul. Can
it be true then that most women would like two hus
bands, one Red-blood, the other Mollycoddle, one to
be the father of their children, the other to be the
companion of their souls ? Women alone can answer ;
and, for the first time in history, they are beginning to
be articulate.

[198]

IX
ADVERTISEMENT
The last two days and nights I spent in a railway train.
We passed through some beautiful country ; that, I
beUeve, is the fact ; but my feeling is that I have
emerged from a nightmare. In my mind is a jumbled
vision of huge wooden cows cut out in profile and
offering from dry udders a fibrous milk ; of tins of
biscuits portrayed with a ghastly realism of perspective,
and mendaciously screaming that I needed them —
U-need-a biscuit ; of gigantic quakers, multiplied as
in an interminable series of mirrors and offering me a
myriad meals of indigestible oats ; of huge painted bulls
in a kind of discontinuous frieze beUowing to the heavens
a chaUenge to produce a better tobacco than theirs ;
of the head of a gentleman, with pink cheeks and a
black moustache, recurring, like a decimal, ad infinitum
on the top of a board, to inform me that his beauty
is the product of his own tofiet powder ; of cod-fish
without bones — " the kind you have always bought " ;
of bacon packed in glass jars ; of whiz suspenders,
sen-sen throat-ease, sure-fit hose, and the whole army
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APPEARANCES
of patent medicines. By river, wood, and meadow,
hamlet or city, mountain or plain, hovers and flits this
obscene host ; never to be escaped from, never to be
forgotten, fixing, with inexorable determination, a
fancy that might be tempted to roam to that one
fundamental fact of life, the operation of the bowels.
Nor, of course, are these incubi, these ghostly eman
ations of the One God Trade, confined to the American
continent. They haunt with equal pertinacity the
lovefier landscapes of England ; they line the route to
Venice ; they squat on the Alps and float on the Rhine ;
they are beginning to occupy the very air, and with
the advent of the air-ship, wiU obliterate the moon and
the stars, and scatter over every lonely moor and soli
tary mountain peak memorials of the stomach, of the
liver and the lungs. Never, in effect, says modern
business to the soul of man, never and nowhere shaU
you forget that you are nothing but a body ; that you
require to eat, to salivate, to digest, to evacuate ; that
you are liable to arthritis, blood-poisoning, catarrh,
colitis, calvity, constipation, consumption, diarrhoea,
diabetes, dysmenorrhcea, epilepsy, eczema, fatty de
generation, gout, goitre, gastritis, headache, haemorrh
age, hysteria, hypertrophy, idiocy, indigestion, jaundice,
lockjaw, melanchoUa, neuralgia, ophthalmia, phthisis,
quinsey, rheumatism, rickets, sciatica, syphuis, tonsi-
litis, tic doloureux, and so on to the end of the alphabet
and back again to the beginning. Never and nowhere
[200]

ADVERTISEMENT
shall you forget that you are a trading animal, buying
in the cheapest and seUing in the dearest market.
Never shah you forget that nothing matters — nothing
in the whole universe — except the maintenance and
extension of industry ; that beauty, peace, harmony
are not commercial values, and cannot be aUowed for
a moment to stand in the way of the advance of trade ;
that nothing, in short, matters except wealth, and that
there is no wealth except money in the pocket. This
— did it ever occur to you — is the real public education
every country is giving, on every hoarding and sky-
sign, to its citizens of every age, at every moment of
their lives. And that being so, is it not a little ironical
that chUdren should be taught for half an hour in school
to read a poem of Wordsworth or a play of Shakespeare,
when for the rest of the twenty-four hours there is being
photographed on their minds the ubiquitous literature
of Owbridge and of Carter ?
But of course advertisement cannot be interfered
with ! It is the life-blood of the nation. AU traders,
aU politicians, all journalists say so. They sometimes
add that it is reaUy, to an unprejudiced spirit, beautiful
and elevating. Thus only this morning I came across
an article in a leading New York newspaper, which
remarks that : " The individual advertisement is com
monly in good taste, both in legend and in iUustration.
Many are positively beautiful ; and, as a wit has truly
said, the cereal advertisements in the magazines are
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APPEARANCES
far more interesting than the serial stories." This
latter statement I can easUy believe ; but when I read
the former there flitted across my mind a picture of
a lady lightly clad reclining asleep against an open
window, a full moon rising in the distance over a lake,
with the legend attached, " CascareUa — it works while
you sleep."
The article from which I have quoted is interesting
not only as iUustrating the diversity of taste, but as
indicating the high degree of development which has
now been attained by what is at once the art and the
science of advertisement. " The study of advertise
ment," it begins, " seems to have a perennial charm
for the American public. Hardly a month passes but
some magazine finds a new and inviting phase of this
modern art to lay before its readers. The solid litera
ture of advertisement is also growing rapidly. . . . The
technique of the subject is almost as extensive as that
of scientific agriculture. Whole volumes have been
compiled on the art of writing advertisements. Com
mercial schools and coUeges devote courses of study
to the subject. Indeed the corner-stone of the curri
culum of a weU-known business coUege is an elective
upon ' Window-dressing.' " That you may be under
no misapprehension, I must add that this article appears
in what is admittedly the most serious and respectable
of the New York newspapers ; and that it is not con
ceived in the spirit of irony or hyperbole. To the
[202]

ADVERTISEMENT
American, advertisement is a serious, important, and
elevating department of business, and those who make
it their speciality endeavour to base their opera
tions on a profound study of human nature. One of
these gentlemen has expounded, in a book which has a
wide circulation, the whole phuosophy of his liberal
profession. He calls the book "Imagination in Busi
ness " 1 ; and I remark incidentally that the use of the
word " imagination," like that of " art," in this con
nection, shows where the inquirer ought to look for the
manifestation, on this continent, of the aesthetic spirit.
" The imaginative man," says the writer, " sends his
thought through aU the instincts, passions, and pre
judices of men, he knows their desires and their regrets,
he knows every human weakness and its sure decoy."
It is this latter clause that is relevant to his theme.
Poets in earlier ages wrote epics and dramas, they cele
brated the strength and nobUity of men ; but the poet
of the modern world " cleverly bunds on the frailties
of mankind." Of these the chief is " the inability to
throw away an element of value, even though it cannot
be utUised." On this great principle is constructed the
whole art and science of advertisement. And my
author proceeds to give a series of illustrations, " each
of which is an actual fact, either in my experience, or
of which I have been cognisant." Space and copyright
forbid me to quote. I must refer the reader to the
1 Imagination in Business (Harper & Brothers),
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APPEARANCES
original source. Nowhere else wiU be found so lucid an
expression of the whole theory and practice of modern
trade. That theory and practice is being taught in schools
of commerce throughout the Union ; and there are many,
I suppose, who would like to see it taught in English
universities. But, reaUy, does anyone — does any man
of business — think it a better education than Greek ?

[204]

X
CULTURE
Scene, a club in a Canadian city ; persons, a professor,
a doctor, a business man, and a traveUer (myself).
Wine, cigars, anecdotes ; and suddenly, popping up,
Uke a Jack-in-the-box absurdly crowned with ivy, the
intolerable subject of education. I do not remember
how it began ; but I know there came a point at which,
before I knew where I was, I found myself being assailed
on the subject of Oxford and Cambridge. Not, however,
in the way you may anticipate. Those ancient seats
of learning were not denounced as fossflised, effete, and
corrupt. On the contrary, I was pressed, urged, im
plored almost with tears in the eye — to reform them ?
No ! to let them alone !
" For heaven's sake, keep them as they are ! You
don't know what you've got, and what you might lose !
We know ! We've had to do without it ! And we
know that without it everything else is of no avail.
We bluster and brag about education on this side of
the Atlantic. But in our heart of hearts we know that
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APPEARANCES
we have missed the one thing needful, and that you,
over in England, have got it."
" And that one thing ? "
" Is Culture ! Yes, in spite of Matthew Arnold,
Culture, and Culture, and always Culture ! "
" Meaning by Culture ? "
" Meaning Aristotle instead of Agriculture, Homer
instead of Hygiene, Shakespeare instead of the Stock
Exchange, Bacon instead of Banking, Plato instead
of Paedagogics ! Meaning inteUect before inteUigence,
thought before dexterity, discovery before invention !
Meaning the only thing that is reaUy practical, ideas ; and
the only thing that is reaUy human, the Humanities ! "
Rather apologetically, I began to explain. At Oxford,
I said, no doubt the Humanities stiU hold the first place.
But at Cambridge they have long been relegated to the
second or the third. There we have schools of Natural
Science, of Economics, of Engineering, of Agriculture.
We have even a Training CoUege in Paedagogics. Their
faces feU, and they renewed their passionate appeal.
" Stop it," they cried. " For heaven's sake, stop it !
In aU those things we've got you skinned alive over
here ! If you want Agriculture go to Wisconsin ! If
you want Medicine, go to the RockefeUer Institute !
If you want Engineering, go to Pittsburg ! But pre
serve stiU for the English-speaking world what you
alone can give ! Preserve Uberal culture ! Preserve
the Classics ! Preserve Mathematics ! Preserve the
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CULTURE
seed-ground of aU practical inventions and appliances !
Preserve the integrity of the human mind ! "
Interesting, is it not ? These gentlemen, no doubt,
were not typical Canadians. But they were not the
least inteUigent men I have met on this continent. And
when they had finaUy landed me in my sleeping-berth
in the train, and I was left to my own reflections in that
most uncomfortable of all situations, I began to consider
how odd it was that in matters educational we are always
endeavouring to reform the only part of our system that
excites the admiration of foreigners.
I do not intend, however, to plunge into that contro
versy. The point that interests me is the view of my
Canadian friends that in America there is no " culture."
And, in the sense they gave to that term, I think
they are right. There is no culture in America. There
is instruction ; there is research ; there is technical
and professional training ; there is specialisation in
science and industry ; there is every possible application
of life, to purposes and ends ; but there is no Ufe for its
own sake. Let me iUustrate. It is, I have read, a
maxim of American business that " a man is damned
who knows two things." " He is almost a dilettante,"
it was said of a student, " he reads Dante and Shake
speare " ! " The perfect professor," said a CoUege
President, " should be wiUing to work hard eleven months
in the year." These are straws, if you like, but they
show the way the wind blows. Again, you wiU find,
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APPEARANCES
if you travel long in America, that you are suffering
from a kind of atrophy. You will not, at first, realise
what it means. But suddenly it wiU flash upon you
that you are suffering from lack of conversation. You
do not converse ; you cannot ; you can only talk. It
is the rarest thing to meet a man who, when a subject
is started, is wiUing or able to foUow it out into its
ramifications, to play with it, to embroider it with
pathos or with wit, to penetrate to its roots, to trace
its connexions and affinities. Question and answer,
anecdote and jest are the staple of American conver
sation ; and, above aU, information. They have a
hunger for positive facts. And you may hear them
hour after hour rehearsing to one another their travels,
their business transactions, their experiences in trains,
in hotels, on steamers, till you begin to feel you have
no alternatives before you but murder or suicide. An
American, broadly speaking, never detaches himself from
experience. His mind is embedded in it ; it moves
wedged in fact. His only escape is into humour ; and
even his humour is but a formula of exaggeration. It
implies no imagination, no real envisaging of its object.
It does not illuminate a subject, it extinguishes it,
clamping upon every topic the same grotesque mould.
That is why it does not reaUy much amuse the EngUsh.
For the English are accustomed to Shakespeare, and
to the London cabby.
This may serve to indicate what I mean by lack
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CULTURE
of culture. I admit, of course, that neither are the
EngUsh cultured. But they have culture among them.
They do not, of course, value it ; the Americans, for
aught I know, value it more ; but they produce it, and
the Americans do not. I have visited many of their
coUeges and universities, and everywhere, except
perhaps at Harvard — unless my impressions are very
much at fault — I have found the same atmosphere.
It is the atmosphere known as the " Yale spirit," and
it is very like that of an English PubUc School. It is
virile, athletic, gregarious, aU-penetrating, aU-embracing.
It turns out the whole university to sing rhythmic songs
and shout rhythmic cries at footbaU matches. It
praises action and sniffs at speculation. It exalts morals
and depresses inteUect. It suspects the solitary person,
the dreamer, the loafer, the poet, the prig. This atmos
phere, of course, exists in English universities. It is
imported there from the Public Schools. But it is not
aU-pervading. Individuals and cliques escape. And it
is those who escape that acquire culture. In America,
no one escapes, or they are too few to count. I know
Americans of culture, know and love them ; but I feel
them to be lost in the sea of phUistinism. They cannot
draw together, as in England, and leaven the lump.
The lump is bigger, and they are fewer. AU the more
honour to them ; and all the more loss to America.
Whether, from aU this, any conclusion is to be drawn
about the proper policy to be pursued at our univer-
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APPEARANCES
sities, is a question I wiU not here discuss. Culture, I
think, is one of those precious things that are achieved
by accident, and by accident may be destroyed. The
things we do to maintain it might kill it ; the things
we do to kiU it might preserve it. My Canadian friends
may be quite wrong in their diagnosis of the causes
that engender or destroy it. But they are right in their
sense of its importance ; and it will be an interesting
result of imperial unity if we find, to our astonishment,
that the Dominions beyond the seas raUy round exactly
those things in England which we expect them to
declare effete. The Rhodes scholars go to Oxford,
not to Birmingham or Liverpool. And it is Cambridge
that peoples the universities of the Empire with pro
fessors.

[210]

XI
ANTAEUS
I saw to-day some reaUy remarkable landscapes by an
American artist. So, at least, they seem to me. They
have, at any rate, a quality of imagination which one
does not expect to find in this country. " One does
not expect " — why not ? Why, in this respect, is
America, as undoubtedly she is, so sterile ? Artists
must be born here as much as elsewhere. American
civilisation, it is true, repels men of reflection and
sensitiveness, just as it attracts men of action ; so
that, as far as immigration is concerned, there is pro
bably a selection working against the artistic type.
But, on the other hand, men of action often produce
sons with a genius for the arts ; and it is to be sup
posed that they do so as much in America as elsewhere.
It must be the environment that is unfavourable.
Artists and poets belong to the genus I have named
" MoUycoddle " ; and in America the Mollycoddle is
hardly allowed to breathe. Nowhere on that continent,
so far as I have been able to see, is there to be found
a class or a clique of men, respected by others and
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APPEARANCES
respecting themselves, who also respect not merely art
but the artistic calling. Broadly, business is the only
respectable pursuit ; including under business Politics
and Law, which in this country are only departments
of business. Business holds the place in popular
esteem that is held by arms in Germany, by letters in
France, by Public Life in England. The man there
fore whose bent is towards the arts meets no encourage
ment ; he meets everywhere the reverse. His father,
his uncles, his brothers, his cousins, aU are in business.
Business is the only virile pursuit for people of educa
tion and means, who cannot weU become chauffeurs.
There is, no doubt, the professorial career ; but that,
it is agreed, is adopted only by men of " no ambition."
Americans believe in education, but they do not believe
in educators. There is no money to be made in that
profession, and the making of money is the test of
character. The born poet or artist is thus handicapped
to a point which may easily discourage him from run
ning at all. At the best, he emigrates to Europe, and
his achievement is credited to that continent. Or,
remaining in America, he succumbs to the environment,
puts aside his creative ambition, and enters business.
It is not for nothing that Americans are the most
active people in the world. They pay the penalty in
an atrophy of the faculties of reflection and repre
sentation. Things are different in Europe, and even in England.
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ANTAEUS
There, not only are artists and men of letters honoured
when they are successful — they are, of course, honoured
at that stage in America ; but the pursuit of litera
ture and art is one which a young man need not feel
it discreditable to adopt. The contemporaries of a
briUiant youth at Oxford or at Cambridge do not
secretly despise him if he declines to enter business.
The first-class man does not normaUy aspire to start life
as a drummer. Public Ufe and the Church offer honour
able careers ; and both of them have traditional affini
ties with literature. So has the Law, stiU in England
a profession and not a trade. One may even be a don
or a schoolmaster without serious discredit. Under these
conditions a young man can escape from the stifling
pressure of the business point of view. He can find
societies like-minded with himself, equaUy indifferent to
the ideal of success in business, equally inspired by
inteUectual or aesthetic ambitions. He can choose to
be poor without feehng that he wiU therefore become
despicable. The attitude of the business classes in
England, no doubt, is much the same as that of the
business classes in America. But in England there are
other classes and other traditions, havens of refuge
from the prevalent commercialism. In America the
trade-wind blows broad, steady, universal over the
length and breadth of the continent.
This, I believe, is one reason for the sterility of
America in Art. But it is not the only one. Litera-
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APPEARANCES
ture and Art in Europe rest on a long tradition which
has not only produced books and pictures, but has
left its mark on the language, the manners, the ideas,
the architecture, the physical features of the country.
The books and the pictures can be transplanted, but
the rest cannot. Thus, even though in every art the
technical tradition has been interrupted, there remains
in Europe what I wiU caU the tradition of feeling ; and
it is this that is absent in America. Art in Europe is
rooted ; and there stiU persists into the present some
thing of the spirit which fostered it in the past. Not
only is Nature beautiful, she is humanised by the works
of Man. Politics are mellowed by history, business
tempered by culture. Classes are more segregated, types
more distinct, ideals and aims more varied. The ghost
of a spiritual life stiU hovers over the natural, shadow
ing it with the beat of solemn wings. There are finer
overtones for a sensitive ear to catch ; rainbow hues
where the spray of life goes up. AU this, it is true, is
disappearing in Europe; but in America it has never
existed. A sensitive European, traveUing there, feels
at once starved and flayed. Nothing nourishes, and
everything hurts. There is natural beauty, but it has
not been crowned and perfected by the hand of man.
Whatever he has touched he has touched only to defile.
There is one pursuit, commerce ; one type, the business
man ; one ideal, that of increasing wealth. Monotony
of talk, monotony of ideas, monotony of aim, monotony
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ANT.EUS
of outlook on the world. America is industrialism pure
and simple ; Europe is industriaUsm superimposed on
feudalism ; and, for the arts, the difference is vital.
But the difference is disappearing. Not that America
is becoming like Europe, but Europe is becoming like
America. This is not a case of the imitation that is a
form of flattery ; it is a case of similar causes producing
simflar results. The disease — or shaU we say, to use a
neutral term — the diathesis of commercialism found in
America an open field and swept through it like a fire.
In Europe, its course was hampered by the structures
of an earlier civiUsation. But it is spreading none the less
surely. And the question arises — In the future, when
the European environment is as unfavourable to Art
as the American, wiU there be, in the West, any Art
at aU ? I do not know ; no one knows ; but there is
this to remark. What I am caUing commercialism is
the infancy, 'not the maturity of a civiUsation. The
revolution in morals, in manners, and in political and
social institutions which must accompany the revolu
tion in industry, has hardly yet begun its course. It
has gone further in Europe than in America ; so that,
oddly enough, Europe is at once behind and in front
of this continent, overlaps it, so to speak, at both ends.
But it has not gone very far even in Europe ; and for
generations, I conceive, political and social issues wiU
draw away much of the creative talent that might have
been available for Art. In the end, one may suppose,
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APPEARANCES
something Uke a stable order wiU arise ; an order, that
is, in which people wiU feel that their institutions corres
pond sufficiently with their inner life, and wiU be able to
devote themselves with a free mind to reflecting their
civUisation in Art.
But wiU their civilisation be of a kind to invite such
reflection ? It wiU be, if the present movement is not
altogether abortive, a civilisation of security, equity,
and peace ; where there is no indigence, no war, and
comparatively little disease. Such society, certainly,
wiU not offer a field for much of the kind of Art that
has been or is now being produced. The primitive
folk-song, the epic of war, the novel or play inspired
by social strife, wiU have passed irrecoverably away.
And more than that, it is sometimes urged, there wiU
be such a dearth of those tense moments which alone
engender the artistic mood, that Art of any kind wiU
have become impossible. If that were true, it would
not, in my opinion, condemn the society. Art is im
portant, but there are things more important ; and
among those things are justice and peace. I do not,
however, accept the view that a peaceable and just
society would necessarily also be one that is uninspired.
That view seems to me to proceed from our incurable
materialism. We think there is no conflict except
with arms ; no rivalry except for bread ; no aspiration
except for money and rank. It is my own beUef that
the removal of the causes of the material strife in which
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ANT^US
most men are now plunged would liberate the energies
for spiritual conflict ; that the passion to know, the
passion to feel, the passion to love, would begin at last
to take their proper place in human life ; and would
engender the forms of Art appropriate to their ex
pression. To return to America, what I am driving at is this.
America may have an Art, and a great Art. But it
wiU be after she has had her social revolution. Her
Art has first to touch ground ; and before it can do that,
the ground must be fit for it to touch. It was not till
the tenth century that the seed of Mediaeval Art could
be sown ; it was not tiU the thirteenth that the flower
bloomed. So now, our civilisation is not ripe for its
own Art. What America imports from Europe is use
less to her. It is torn from its roots ; and it is idle to
replant it ; it wiU not grow. There must be a native
growth, not so much of America, as of the modern era.
That growth America, like Europe, must will. She has
her prophet of it, Walt Whitman. In the coming
centuries it is her work to make his vision real.

[217]

CONCLUDING ESSAY
The preceding pages were written in the course of travel
and convey the impressions and reflections of the
moment. Whatever interest they may have depends
upon this immediacy, and for that reason I have re
printed them substantially as they first appeared.
Perhaps, however, some concluding reflections of a
more considered nature may be of some interest to my
readers. I do not advance them in a dogmatic spirit
nor as final judgments, but as the first tentative results
of my gropings into a large and complicated subject.
I wiU ask the reader, therefore, be he Western or Oriental,
to foUow me in a spirit at once critical and sympathetic,
chaUenging my suggestions as much as he will, but
rather as a fellow-seeker than as an opponent bent upon
refutation. For I am trying to comprehend rather than
to judge, and to comprehend as impartiaUy as is com
patible with having an attitude of one's own at all.
Ever since Mr. Rudyard Kipling wrote a famous line
it has become a commonplace of popular thought in
England and America that there is an East and a
West, and an impassable gulf between them. But Mr.
Kipling was thinking of India, and India is not aU the
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CONCLUDING ESSAY
East : he was thinking of England, and England is not
aU the West. As soon as one approaches the question
more particularly it becomes a complicated matter to
decide whether there is really an East and a West,
and what either stands for. That there is a West, in
a real sense, with a unity of its own, is, I think, true.
But it must be limited in time to the last two centuries,
and in space to the countries of Western Europe and
the continent of America. So understood, the West
forms, in all the most important respects, a homo
geneous system. True,, it is divided into different
nations, speaking different languages, and pursuing
different, and often conflicting, policies ; and these
distinctions are stUl so important, that they colour our
fears and hopes and sympathies, and take form in the
burden of armaments and the menace of war. Never
theless, seen in the perspective of history, they are
survivals, atrophying and disappearing. Behind and
despite of them there is a common Western mind and
a common Western organisation. Finance is cosmo
politan ; industry is cosmopoUtan ; trade is cosmopolitan.
There is one scientific method, and the results achieved
by it are common. There is one system of industry,
that known as Capitalism ; and the problems arising
from it and the solutions propounded appear alike in
every nation. There is one political tendency, or fact,
that of popular government. There are cognate aims
and similar achievements in literature and art. There
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APPEARANCES
is, in brief, a Western movement, a Western problem,
a Western mentaUty ; and the particular happenings of
particular nations are aU parts of this one happening.
Nor is this aU. There is in the West a common religion.
I do not refer to Christianity, for the religion I mean is
held by hundreds and thousands who are not Christians,
and indeed does not very readily find in Christianity an
expression at once coherent and pure. It has not been
formulated in a creed ; but it is to be felt and heard
in aU the serious work and all the serious thought of the
West. It is the religion of Good and Evil, of Time
and the process in Time. If it tried to draw up a
confession of faith perhaps it would produce, as its
first attempt, something of this kind : —
" I believe in the ultimate distinction between Good
and Evil, and in a real process in a real Time. I
beUeve it to be my duty to increase Good and diminish
Evil ; I believe that in doing this I am serving the
purpose of the world. I know this ; I do not know
anything else ; and I am reluctant to put questions to
which I have no answer, and to which I do not believe
that anyone has an answer. Action, as defined above,
is my creed. Speculation weakens action. I do not
wish to speculate, I wish to live. And I believe the
true life to be the life I have described."
In saying that this is the real creed of the modern
Western man I do not pretend that he always knows or
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CONCLUDING ESSAY
would admit it to be so. But if his actions, his words,
and his thoughts be sympatheticaUy interpreted, where
aU are at their best, I think they wiU be found to imply
something of this kind. And this attitude I caU religious,
not merely ethical, because of its conviction that the
impulse towards Good is of the essence of the World,
not only of men, or of Man. To believe this is an act
of faith, not of reason ; though it is not contrary to
reason, as no faith should be or long can be. Many
men do not believe it, for many are not religious ; others,
while beUeving it, may beUeve also many other things.
But it is the irreducible minimum of religion in the
modern West, the justification of our life, the faith of
our works. I caU it the Religion of Time, and distin
guish it thus from the Religion of Eternity.
In this sense, then, this profound sense, of a common
aim and a common motive, there is really a West. Is
there also an East ? That is not so clear. In some
important respects, no doubt, the Eastern civilisations
are alike. They are stiU predominantly agricultural.
Their industry is manual not mechanical. Their social
unit is the extended family. To travel in the East is to
reaUse that life on the soil and in the viUage is there
still the normal Ufe, as it has been almost everywhere
and always, throughout civilisation, until the last century
in the West. But though there is thus in the East a
common way of life, there is not a common organisation
nor a common spirit. EconomicaUy, the great Eastern
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APPEARANCES
countries are stiU independent of one another. Each
lives for the most part by and on itself. And their
intellectual and spiritual intercourse is now (though it
was not in the past) as negligible as their economic
commerce. The influence that is beginning to be
strong upon them all is that of Western culture ; and
if they become alike in their outlook on life, it will be
by assimilating that. But, at present, they are not
alike. It is easy, in this matter, to be deceived by the
outward forms of religion. Because Buddhism origi
nated in India and spread to China and Japan, because
Japan took Confucian ideals from China, it is natural
to conclude that there is a common religious spirit
throughout the East, or the Far East. But one might
as reasonably infer that the spirit of the christianised
Teutons was the same as that of the Jews or of the
Christians in the East. Nations borrow religions, but
they shape them according to their own genius. And
if I am not very much mistaken the outlook of India
is, and always has been, radically distinct from and
even opposed to that of China or Japan. These latter
countries, indeed, I believe, are far closer to the West
than they are to India. Let me explain.
India is the true origin and home of what I have
caUed the religion of Eternity. That idea seems to
have gone out from her to the rest of the world. But
nowhere else was it received with equal purity and
passion. Elsewhere than in India the claims of Time
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CONCLUDING ESSAY
were predominant. In India they have been sub
ordinate. This, no doubt, is a matter of emphasis.
No society, as a whole, could believe and act upon the
belief that activity in Time is simply waste of time,
and absorption in the Eternal the direct and immediate
object of life. Such a view, acted upon, would bring
the society quickly to an end. It would mean that the
very physical instinct to live was extinguished. But, as
the Eternal was first conceived by the amazing origi
nality of India, so the passion to realise it here and
now has been the motive of her saints from the date
of the Upanishads to the twentieth century. And the
method of realisation proposed and attempted has not
been the living of the temporal Ufe in a particular
spirit, it has been the transcending of it by a special
experience. Indian saints have always believed that by
meditation and ascetic discipline, by abstaining from
active life and aU its claims, and cultivating solitude
and mortification, they could reach by a direct experi
ence union with the Infinite. This is as true of the
latest as of the earliest saints, if and so far as Western
influences have been excluded. Let me iUustrate from
the words of Sri Ramakrishna, one of the most typical
of Indian saints, who died late in the nineteenth century.
First, for the claim to pass directly into union with
the Eternal :
" I do see that Being as a Reality before my very
eyes ! Why then should I reason ? I do actuaUy see
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APPEARANCES
that it is the Absolute Who has become all these things
about us ; it is He who appears as the finite soul and
the phenomenal world. One must have such an
awakening of the Spirit within to see this Reality. . . .
Spiritual awakening must be followed by Samadhi. In
this state one forgets that one has a body ; one loses
aU attachment to things of this world." 1
And let it not be supposed that this state called Samadhi
is merely one of intense meditation. It is something
much more abnormal, or super-normal, than this. The
book from which I am quoting contains many accounts
of its effects upon Sri Ramakrishna. Here is one of
them :
"He is now in a state of Samadhi, the supercon-
scious or God-conscious state. The body is again
motionless. The eyes are again fixed ! The boys only
a moment ago were laughing and making merry ! Now
they aU look grave. Their eyes are steadfastly fixed
on the master's face. They marvel at the wonderful
change that has come over him. It takes him long to
come back to the sense world. His limbs now begin
to lose their stiffness. His face beams with smiles, the
organs of sense begin to come back each to its own
work. Tears of joy stand at the corners of his eyes.
He chants the sacred name of Rama." 2
1 Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, second edition, Part I., p. 310.
2 Ibid., p. 61.
[224]

CONCLUDING ESSAY
The object, then, of this saint, and one he claims to
have attained, is to come into union with the Infinite
by a process which removes him altogether from contact
with this world and from aU possibility of action in it.
This world, in fact, is to him, as to aU Indian saints
and most Indian philosophers, phenomenal and unreal.
Of the speculative problems raised by this conception I
need not speak here. But it belongs to my purpose
to bring out its bearing upon conduct. AU conduct
depends upon the conception of Good and Evil. Anti-
moralists, like Nietzsche, assume and require these
ideas, just as much as moralists ; they merely attempt
to give them a new content. If conduct is to have
any meaning, Good and Evil must be real in a real
world. If they are held to be appearances conduct
becomes absurd. What now is Sri Ramakrishna's view
of this matter ? The whole life that we Western men
call real is to him a mere game played by and for the
sake of God, or, to use his phrase, of the Divine Mother.
For her pleasure she keeps men bound to Time, instead
of free in Eternity. For her pleasure, therefore, she
creates and maintains Evil. I quote the passage :
" My Divine Mother is always in Her sportive mood.
The world, indeed, is Her toy. She wiU have Her own
way. It is Her pleasure to take out of the prison-
house and set free only one or two among a hundred
thousand of her children !
" A Brahmo : Sir, She can if She pleases set every-
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APPEARANCES
body free. Why is it then, that She has bound us hand
and foot with the chains of the world ?
" Sri Ramakrishna : Well, I suppose it is her pleasure.
It is her pleasure to go on with Her sport with aU these
beings that She has brought into existence. The
player amongst the children that touches the person
of the Grand-dame, the same need no longer run about.
He cannot take any further part in the exciting play
of Hide and Seek that goes on.
" The others who have not touched the goal must run
about and play to the great delight of the Grand-dame." 1
Thus the Indian saint. Let us now try to bring his
conception into relation with what we in the West
believe to be real experience. In a railway accident a
driver is pinned against the furnace and slowly burned
to death, praying the bystanders in vain to put him out
of his misery. What is this ? It is the sport of God !
In Putumayo innocent natives are deprived of their
land, enslaved, tortured, and murdered, that share
holders in Europe may receive high dividends. What
is this ? The sport of God ! In the richest countries
of the West a great proportion of those who produce
the wealth receive less than the wages which would
suffice to keep them in bare physical health. What
is this ? Once more the sport of God ! One might
multiply examples, but it would be idle. No Western
man could for a moment entertain the view of Sri
1 Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, second edition, Part I., p. 145.
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CONCLUDING ESSAY
Ramakrishna. To him such a God would be a mere
devil. The Indian position, no doubt, is a form of
idealism ; but an idealism conditioned by defective
experience of the life in Time. The saint has chosen
another experience. But clearly he has not transcended
ours, he has simply left it out.
Now I am aware that it wiU be urged by some of the
most sincere representatives of religion in India that
Sri Ramakrishna does not typify the Indian attitude.
Perhaps not, if we take contemporary India. But then
contemporary India has been profoundly influenced by
Western thought ; modern Indians like Raja Ram
Mohan Roy, Keshub Chunder Sen, Rabindranath Tagore,
could hardly have thought and felt as they did, and do,
were it not for this influence. The following poem of
Rabindranath Tagore may aptly symbolise this break
ing in of the West upon the East, though I do not know
that that was the author's intention :
" With days of hard travail I raised a temple. It had no
doors or windows, its walls were thickly built with
massive stones.
I forgot all else, I shunned all the world, I gazed in rapt
contemplation at the image I had set upon the altar.
It was always night inside, and lit by the lamps of per
fumed oil. The ceaseless smoke of incense wound
my heart in its heavy coils.
Sleepless, I carved on the walls fantastic figures in mazy
bewildering lines — winged horses, flowers with human
faces, women with limbs like serpents.
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APPEARANCES
No passage was left anywhere through which could enter
the song of birds, the murmur of leaves, or the hum
of the busy village.
The only sound that echoed in its dark dome was that
of incantations which I chanted.
My mind became keen and still like a pointed flame, my
senses swooned in ecstasy.
I knew not how time passed till the thunderstone had
struck the temple, and a pain stung me through the
heart.
The lamp looked pale and ashamed ; the carvings on
the walls, Uke chained dreams, stared meaningless
in the light, as they would fain hide themselves.
I looked at the image on the altar. I saw it smiling and
alive with the living touch of God. The night I had
imprisoned spread its wings and vanished." *
The closed temple, I believe, is a true image of the
spiritual life of India, if not at all times, at any rate
for many centuries previous to the advent of the English.
Everything seems to point to this — the symbolic charac
ter of Indian art ; the absence of history and the
prevalence of religious legend ; the cult of the fakir
and the wandering ascetic. In India one feels religion
as one feels it nowhere else, unless it were in Russia.
But the religion one feels is peculiar. It is the religion
that denies the value of experience in Time. It is the
religion of the Eternal.
But, it will be urged, how can that be, when India
continues to produce her teeming millions ; when these
perforce live their brief lives in a constant and often
vain struggle for a bare livelihood ; when, in order to
1 The Gardener, p. 125.
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CONCLUDING ESSAY
live at aU, it is necessary at every point to be straining
vitality in the pursuit of temporal goods or the avoid
ance of temporal evils ?
I make no attempt to disguise or to weaken this
paradox. But I suggest that it is but one of the many
paradoxes set up by the conflict between men's instinct
for life and their conscious beliefs. Indians live not
because they believe in life, but because they cannot
help it. Their hold on life is certainly less than that of
Western men. Thus I have been told by administrators
of famine relief or of precautions against plague, that
what they have to contend with is not so much the re
sistance as the indifference of the population. " Why
worry us ? " they say, in effect ; " life is not worth the
trouble. Let us die and be rid of it." Life is an evil,
that is the root feeling of India ; and the escape is either,
for the mass, by death ; or for the men of spiritual
genius, by a flight to the Eternal. How this attitude
has arisen I do not here seek to determine ; race, climate,
social and political conditions, aU no doubt have played
their part. The spiritual attitude is probably an effect,
rather than a cause, of an enfeebled grip on life. But
no one, I think, who knows India, would dispute that
this attitude is a fact ; and it is a fact that distinguishes
India not only from the West but from the Far East.
For China and Japan, though they have had, and to
a less extent stiU have, religion, are not, in the Indian
sense, religious. The Chinese, in particular, strike one
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as secular and practical ; quite as secular and practical
as the English. They have had Buddhism, as we have
had Christianity ; but no one who can perceive and
understand would say that their outlook is determined
by Buddhism, any more than ours is by Christianity.
It is Confucianism that expresses the Chinese attitude
to Ufe, whenever the Chinese soul, becoming aware of
itself, looks out from the forest of animistic beliefs
in which the mass of the people wander. And Con
fucianism is perhaps the best and purest expression of
the practical reason that has ever been formulated.
Family duty, social duty, political duty, these are the
things on which it lays stress. And when the Chinese
spirit seeks escape from these primary preoccupations, it
finds its freedom in an art that is closer to the world of
fact, imaginatively conceived, than that of any other
race. Chinese art purifies itself from symbolism to
become interpretation ; whereas in India the ocean of
symbolism never ceases to roll over the drowning
surface of the phenomenal world. Chinese literature,
again, has this same hold upon life. It is such as
Romans or Englishmen, if equally gifted, might have
written. Much of it, indeed, is stupidly and tediously
didactic. But where it escapes into poetry it is a
poetry like Wordsworth's, revealing the beauty of actual
things, rather than weaving across them an embroidery
of subjective emotions The outlook of China is essen
tially the outlook of the West, only more sane, more
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CONCLUDING ESSAY
reasonable, more leisured and dignified. Positivism and
Humanity, the dominant forms of thought and feeling
in the West, have controlled Chinese civilisation for
centuries. The Chinese have built differently from
ourselves and on a smaUer scale, with less violence
and less power ; but they have built on the same
foundations. And Japan, too, at bottom is secular. Her true
religion is that of the Emperor and his divine ancestors.
Her strongest passion is patriotism. A Japanese, like
an Indian, is always ready to die. But he dies for the
splendours and glories of this world of sense. It is
not because he has so little hold on life, but because he
has so much, that he so readily throws it away. The
Japanese are unlike the Chinese and unUke the Europeans
and Americans ; but their outlook is similar. They
believe in the world of time and change ; and because
of this attitude, they and the rest of the world stand
together like a mountain in the sun, contemplating
uneasily that other mysterious peak, shrouded in mist,
which is India.
The reader by this time will have grasped the point
I am trying to put. There are in Man two religious
impulses, or, if the expression be preferred, two aspects
of the religious impulse. I have caUed them the religion
of the Eternal and the religion of Time ; and India I
suggest stands pre-eminently for the one, the West for
the other, while the other countries of the East rank
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APPEARANCES
rather with the West than with India. It is not neces
sary to my purpose to exaggerate this antithesis. I
wiU say, if it be preferred, that in India the emphasis
is on the Eternal, in the West on Time. But that
much at least must be said and is plainly true. Now,
as between these two attitudes, I find myself quite
clearly and definitely on the side of the West. I
have said in the preceding pages hard things about
Western civilisation. I hate many of its manifestations,
I am out of sympathy with many of its purposes. I
can see no point, for instance, in the discovery of the
north or the south pole, and very little in the invention of
aeroplanes ; while gramophones, machine guns, adver
tisements, cinematographs, submarines, dreadnoughts,
cosmopolitan hotels, seem to me merely fatuous or
sheerly disastrous. But what Ues behind all this, the
tenacity, the courage, the spirit of adventure, this it is
that is the great contribution of the West. It is not
the aeroplane that is valuable ; probably it wiU never
be anything but pernicious, for its main use is likely
to be for war. But the fact that men so lightly risk
their Uves to perfect it, that is valuable. The West is
adventurous ; and, what is more, it is adventurous on
a quest. For behind and beyond aU its fatuities,
confusions, crimes, lies, as the justification of it aU,
that deep determination to secure a society more just
and more humane which inspires aU men and aU move
ments that are worth considering at all, and, to those
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CONCLUDING ESSAY
who can understand, gives greatness and significance
even to some of our most reckless enterprises. We are
living very " dangerously " ; aU the forces are loose,
those of destruction as well as those of creation ; but
we are living towards something ; we are living with the
religion of Time.
So far, I daresay, most Western men wiU agree with
me in the main. But they may say, some of them, as
the Indian wUl certainly say, " Is that aU ? Have you
no place for the Eternal and the Infinite ? " To this I
must reply that I think it clear and indisputable that the
religion of the Eternal, as interpreted by Sri Rama
krishna, is altogether incompatible with the religion of
Time. And the position of Sri Ramakrishna, I have
urged, is that of most Indian, and as I think, of most
Western mystics. Not, however, of all, and not of
all modern mystics, even in India. Rabindranath
Tagore, for example, in his " Sadhana," has put forward
a mysticism which does, at least, endeavour to allow
for and include what I have caUed the religion of Time.
To him, and to other mystics of real experience, I must
leave the attempt to reconcUe Eternity and Time. For
my own part, I can only approach the question from
the point of view of Time, and endeavour to discover
and realise the most that can be truly said by one who
starts with the belief that that is real. The profoundest
prophets of the religion of Time are, in my judgment,
Goethe and George Meredith ; and from them, and from
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Y

APPEARANCES
others, and from my own small experience, I seem to
have learned this : the importance of that process in
Time in whose reality we believe does not lie merely in
the bettering of the material and social environment,
though we hold the importance of that to be great ;
it lies in the development of souls. And that develop
ment consists in a constant expansion of interest away
from and beyond one's own immediate interests out
into the activities of the world at large. Such expan
sion may be pursued in practical life, in art, in science,
in contemplation, so long as the contemplation is of the
real processes of the real world in time. To that expan
sion I see no limit except death. And I do not know
what comes after death. But I am clear that what
ever comes after, the command of Life is the same — to
expand out of oneself into the life of the world. This
command — I should rather say this impulse — seems to
me absolute, the one certain thing on which everything
else must build. I think it enough for religion, in the
case at least of those who have got beyond the infant
need for certitudes and dogmas. These perhaps are
few ; yet they may be really more numerous than
appears. And on the increase in their numbers, and the
intensity of their conviction and their life, the fate of
the world seems to me to depend.

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