text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/124

VEN to one who loves her and accepts the rigor of her economy as part of her lasting reward, nature is not everywhere in a communicable mood, nor is she always the same. Her disposition often changes with our own; her appeal seldom reaches the discordant heart. Her inner voice is never heard by the passing stranger. To say that we love nature only when we take the pains to understand her, is trite; but we can only partly understand her when we suffer her to impose upon us her supreme will. She unveils for those who linger and wait; and she speaks only to him who stands in reverence before a moss or a fern as before the greatest of the mysteries of the universe. A bird is singing in the branches of a hemlock; a worm is eating into its bark. The ranger passes by indifferent to both, nothing seeing or hearing. But the poet-naturalist lingers,


text: Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/378

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/378


text: Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/379

title: Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/379


text: Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/374

title: Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/374


text: Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/375

title: Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/375


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/125

 eager to see and learn; and with an undivided heart, an observing eye and mind, he returns again and again to his schooling, discovers the secret of both bird and worm, informs the music and the silence with a spirit of his own, and actually adds to the idealism and the practical knowledge of man. He saves the tree for the State and he saves the song for the world. Strictly speaking, the pages of nature's book we admire the most are those that bear marginal notes of our own personality and experience.

That is why, I think, Thoreau would not have felt as much at home in the rugged splendors of the ancient Lebanons as he did in the placid solitudes of Walden woods. He might have been a naturalist there, but not a poet; even as a stranger, coming to Concord from a distant land, might only find in the Thoreau-country the visible landscape, not of Thoreau's poetic Soul, but of nature's least poetic moods. This particular page of her book leaves him cold, and the marginal notes are often


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/126

. It may be that he did not come at the right time, or he did not open the book at an auspicious moment. But more likely his heart had been preempted elsewhere, so that, outside a particular spot, he finds Carlyle's obvious remark, One green field, all green fields, damping his enthusiasm, hopelessly extinguishing in him every poetic rapture.

Such has been my experience when I visited Concord, such, my disappointment in the Catskills that, although a lover of nature in all her moods, I found myself turning from her text to Thoreau's marginal notes and those of his distinguished but less poetic successor John Burroughs. And while I enjoy their chants, I can not be a worshipper at their shrines, nor can I even pretend to share the least intimacy with their goddess, having already pledged my soul at another temple. For though our faith and our rituals too are the same, our gods differ. It is curious, indeed, how the universal spirit sometimes carries us back to the parochial. Like the Ujigami of


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/127

 Japan, we all have our distinct deities, which we invest with our own personality. In this sense, we are all self-worshippers: the gods of our allegiance, our devotion, are the gods of our pride. Else why should we be so attached to the soil, the plants, the flowers, the cliffs of our native land? There is something even in a familiar fern that leaves in the soul the impress of its own locality.

In my own country the flowers are the toys of our childhood; they are nature's precious presents, which she never fails to bring us on every holiday. Even on Christmas she calls the children to her snow-crowned heights to surprise them with her wild violets. And these they bring to the altar of the local Saint, who promises to fulfill all their desires if they pray for them while picking the flowers in his name. Once I remember, in a fit of envy and anger I prayed for the death of a boy who got ahead of me to a favorite spot under a sheltering rock, where the violets bloomed in abundance. A week later there was an


text:
Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/373

 Seemed loving her who shone beneath that tree—

With lawns far off whose flower of higher delight

Behind Death's icy peaks and fens of night

Bloomed 'neath a heaven her eyes, not ours, could see.

Brother, did Nature mock us with that glory

Which seemed to prophesy Love's rounded story?

Or was it, that sweet Summer's fond device

To show thee who shall stand on Eden slopes,

Where bloom the broken buds of earthly hopes

Stand waiting 'neath a tree of Paradise?

title: Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/373


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/128

 epidemic of smallpox in our village, and the boy, my playmate, was carried off by the disease. I was so angry with the Saint for answering in this instance my prayer that never after would I pray to him or pick the violets in his name. For if he heard me when I offered the prayer, I argued, he must have heard me also when I took it back. Thus early did I waver in my religious devotion; but nature, nevertheless, continued to bring me her presents, the flowers. Which made me love her the more. I even set up for myself a local Saint of her own,—St. Cyclamen I called him,—in a grove of pines, under the protection of the Cross. Why did I compromise with the Church, I knew not then—I know not now. But there it is, in the pine-grove, my Temple of the Flowers and the Christ. And whether a lover of nature be a poet, or a philosopher, or a child, he can at best only pretend to be indifferent to the call of the flowers of his own locality, which bloom every year on the altar of his faith. Perennially they call, and, although


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/129

 we be in the farthermost parts of the world, they seldom fail in the calling. Else why should I—and I die a hundred deaths in a sea voyage—cross the ocean again and again to visit my native land? America too is the land of my birth, my second birth, so to speak, which is more significant, to myself at least, than the first. And here I have often found myself in the bosom of nature, comforted and reassured. Here are daisies as lovely as the soil and sun and rain ever made; but such loveliness is marred for me by a sad-sweet recollection: the daisies that have known the caresses of my infant love, that have heard the lispings of my superstitious heart, are sweeter of breath, stronger of appeal. Here are gardens where the resources and ingenuity of man would surpass the beauty of nature; but wherever I turn my eyes among the elegant variety of their flowers, I can see only the image of the homely sweet-basil, my mother's favorite plant. Here too are cultivated cyclamens hardier and more beautiful than the delicate


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/130

 that peep out of the crannies and crevices of my native rocks and terrace-walls; but whenever I behold them I fain would run barefoot again in the Lebanon hills, ascending and descending the flower-covered terraces, to gather a sheaf on Good Friday of the April harvest and lay it at the foot of the Cross. And the hemlocks of the land of my second birth are as majestic and as generous as the Lebanon pines; but the fact that they have a claim upon my gratitude, having lived with them for a space and profited by their intimacy and healing influence, does not, and can not, alienate my first love for the trees of my boyhood,—of my childly joys,—and my child-faith. Alas, the wrath of my local Deity is upon me!

What is it then that would conquer the cosmic spirit in us and, overcoming all the faculties of reason, attach us in affection to certain spots and objects, which we call Home or Mother-Country? In my own case, it can not be patriotism; for I never had a chance to be a patriot, not even in


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/131

 the Johnsonian sense of the word. Moreover, in a land where the freedom of the spirit, even the freedom of the citizen, has not yet been realized, one can better serve one's country from a safe distance. I have often given it absent treatment with little or no result. My subject and I are not en rapport. Enough said of patriotism. But whence comes it, this love for one's country? One's language? English to me is as dear, though not as explicable in some of its idiosyncracies, as the Arabic. Domestic life? the customs and traditions of the hearth? I did not love my own home when I lived in it; I little appreciated the domestic peace and beauty of it; and I was glad to say good-bye to mine own people when I left it. Does it consist of one's national faith, of the religion of one's ancestors, this love for one's country? I would not be so irresistably attracted by it, if it did. For my race, ever since the days of Antiochus the Great, nay, back to the times of my fellow-scrivener, Sanchuniathon the Phoenician, never had a real


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/132

 national faith; and my father's religion was in the pocket of my native robe when I threw it overboard the first time I crossed the Atlantic.

Why then, I repeat, this chronic nostalgia? My local Deity forever calling? I might go there only to find the Temple in ruins. Nature's presents heaped at my door? The heart craves knowledge now, not affection; the torments of the understanding can not be wholly assuaged by the Beautiful. Do the toys of our childhood become in latter days the toys of our souls? Here., [sic] I think, I am nearer to the truth. For we must be as children again to be able to enjoy, from purest spiritual motive, our native soil and the enchanted scenes of our childly days and dreams. And the comely simplicity of childhood, its mystic innocense, is incarnate in the trees, the flowers, the streams and the hills of the mother-land. Everything a child touches in his holy years lives afterward in the pious memory a life of its own and is subject, like the flowers, to the vicissitudes


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/133

 of the seasons. It grows, it blooms, it withers; and withering, it spreads of its petals a rug under the feet of remeniscencereminiscence [sic]. It paints the horizon of the soul a sullen gold,—it fills its resting places with an entrancing perfume. The child-soul is a nursery which afterward often becomes a deserted garden in which we love to stroll. It is a cathedral in which are buried the cherubs of our fancy and the heroes of our dreams.—The cyclamen is going to be my intercessor at the altar of my local Saint. As I draw it gently out of its nich in the rock, to preserve its diapered leaf and every inch of its delicate russet stem, I impart to it a life separate from its own, which I cherish in my dream-moments more than any worldly dream. And our mother's nurseries, how we would rancaskransack [sic] them to make a child's holiday! Those same flowers and odoriferous plants that we destroyed in infant rapture, still grow and bloom perennially to diffuse around them such joy and faith in life as mortal man, in his recurring doubts,


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/134

 requires. These toys of childhood, these spiritual tokens, fragile but unbreakable, live, indeed, in the flowers we used to gather for our local Saint; in the woods where we were often lost or caught by the storm; in the tall grass through which we would wade, playing hide and seek; in the trees we used to climb, whose branches still murmur our songs of joy; in the roaring rivulets whose wintry wrath we defied; in the Summer vineyards whose gold and purple grapes we stole; in the April fields whose lotus and iris and daffodil we gathered for Palm Sunday. The love for the mother-country that does not consist essentially of these, is not spiritually pure enough to engage our thought.

And yet, to be honest with the reader to the end, I must add, having already spoken of a second birth, that in its nursery Concord has sown a pinch of the flower-seeds of transcendentalism. But what chance have these seeds to grow in the cold and sunless habitations of the city? In my ceaseless


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/135

 search, however, I found a window once through which, now and then, a glint of sunlight came to surprise us. The seeds showed signs of life, which encouraged me to seek a place for them on the outskirts of nature, where they first grew to tenderness and beauty, in confusion and abundance. But they were smitten of a sudden, almost asphyxiated. From all the public highways around us came the fatal breath of the God of Gasoline. Deep into the glen, therefore, and far from the highways of motoring-man, we remove, seeking the virgin soil in the very heart of nature.

But here were wild flowers that reminded me of the roses, the jasmines and the sweet-basils of the homely nurseries of Lebanon. And in the deep silence of the woods the shadows of my native pines arose before me, above the majestic hemlocks, to say salaam. The myrtle and the sage around the scrub oaks beckoned and called. The crocus, the anemone, the cyclamen, blooming everywhere, as by magic, over the pale images of the asters and the goldenrods,


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/136

 remonstrated with me like true lovers. And yet, in the heart of mine own country the flower-seeds of Concord may not fare better than they did in the cold and sunless habitations of the city or on the outskirts of nature now hardened by the highways of the God of Gasoline. Go to Concord and transplant them there? It is long since the flower first bloomed in that soil that it would not, I'm afraid, be recognized today. It might die of neglect. Alas for the nursery of the soul! But our mothers' nurseries remain, my Brothers, to yield us a little solace. And what matters it if my Mother be old and crabbed and unsympathetic? What matters it if she is not counted of the young and strong among nations?

True, her history is that of a country without a flag or a national hymn; but her divine message once stirred the innermost heart of the world. True, her traditions are those of a nation without a king, a people without a voice, a soul without a temple; but her ancient spirit still lives and


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/137

 is still destined to conquer and redeem. And although her garden-walls crumble on one side into desert waste and on the other into barren strands, her heritage is the Cross and a sea of flowers. Syria the land of roses, Syria the cradle and the tomb of the gods! When Byblos adored Tammuz, when Baalbek worshipped Jupitor-Ammon, when Galilee conquered Judea, when Arabia overcame Galilee, thou wert then a Fountain of the Spirit toward which turned a thirsty world. Thy temple was the temple of the universe, thy voice was the voice of God. From the Tigris to the Red Sea, from the Taurus to the Hijaz, thou hast ever been the garden of revelation and the battlefield of the creeds. But if the Prophets no longer thunder on thy mountains, the bulbuls still sing in thy dells and dales, the roses still blow on thy rugged brow, and the cedars, from their snowy heights, still cast their shadows over the golden sands. Syria the land of roses, Syria the cradle and the tomb of the gods, if thou wert to become a howling desert


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/138

 to-morrow, thou wouldst still be the cheriched of nations and the coveted of empires.


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/139

ROM Aleppo to the City of the Abbaside Khalifs, over ancient Babylon and Nineveh!—O seers of Chaldea, did you ever behold this in your visions,—did you ever read of it in your book of stars? Indeed, the railroad and the aeroplane are rumbling to-day over buried Babylon. And in the golden silence of the desert the modern capitalist, after the Man of Neishapur, will sing,

For after all, Nineveh and Babylon might only be asleep. To be sure, wherever there are streams of opalescent water, human life is imperishable, immortal. But sleep is often mistaken for death; and the apoplexy of a nation is of longer duration than that of an individual. Under the magic wand of modern industrialism, therefore, Babylon and Nineveh might rise again and put Paris and New York to


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/140

 shame. No; they might rise and help to bring the better mind of Europe nearer to the East and the purer soul of India nearer to the West : they might become the connecting link between the Orient and the Occident of the future. Geographically, this is logical; historically, it is possible. Meanwhile, the idealists in both continents, the proclaimers of the confederation of the world, may go on dreaming; and Capital, the pioneer of the children of dreams, will sing in the valley of the Euphrates the song of the dawn of industry.

And along with them, perhaps, the poetry of the Arab and his horse. But this lament over the passing of the poet might not be wholly justified. For after the nations of the past are resuscitated, after the work of creation, lasting six days or six centuries, is performed, Capital will want to rest and be entertained. She will welcome again the poet; she will build


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/141

 temples to his Muse. At present, however, the bard must not hover on the horizon of Capital. We must forge ahead. Nothing in the way is sacred. The Young Turks themselves once spent a few piasters in this business of redemption. They tried to mow down the Arabs to pave the way for the European steam engine. Now the English are conspiring against the lethal but sacred lethargy of the Euphrates. They will dam the river to bless its valley. They will mutilate it, chop it into pools, so to speak, and cage its currents in canals and ditches to make them sing in the wilderness the song of plenty. Indeed, there is a kind of poetry, deep and elemental as Ossian's, even in the achievements of science, even in the mechanical marvels of engineering. We live in an age, which, in its vast inclusions at least, is the most poetic of all ages. No nation, however far removed from the pivot of its dynamic influence, no people, however stolid and hidebound, is free to shake off its thrall or to reject its boon. A


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/142

 truth or a fallacy uttered in London is echoed the following day in Baghdad; an idea born in New York soon captures the mind of Damascus; a discovery made in Paris benefits even the silk worms in the shadow of the Lebanon cedars. A marvellous thing this civilization, even to a sophisticated Oriental, who revels in its romance, which the scribes translate from the columns of the American and European newspapers, as he would in the Arabian Nights. Indeed, those who produced the Arabian Nights are to him incarnate in the makers of our civilization. Therefore—but let the logician draw his own conclusions. This international game of Give and Take is as baffling as any other. To lose in it is to gain, and vice versa.

If the poet of Baghdad realized this, he would not waste his soul in lamentations over buried kingdoms.—O Babylon, Europe is desecrating thy sacred dust. O Nineveh, the Franks have come to mock at thy past. Over thy palaces, O Samiramis, over thy grave, O Belshazzar—but let the poet of


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/143

 Baghdad sit upon the highway and lament. The train will soon be coming. Meanwhile, the doctors of the Mohammedan law, the ulema of Islam, will scan their sacred books to see if aught therein is mentioned about the railroad and the aeroplane. And if, after straining their theological faculties, they can not find, expressed or implied, a divine sanction of these inventions, they will forthwith curse them from the pulpit. Yes; this has already been done in Nejd. But the Arabs, though they begin by waylaying the trains to Medina, will soon be laying rails themselves across the Nefud. The genius of this industrial age is destined to world conquest and power. And the Koran, that divine encyclopedia of the Muslem, has an elasticity of phrase that can be made to cover any heresy, ancient or modern, speculative or industrial.

Speaking one day with one of the ulema of Damascus of the extravagance of practical science, I mentioned the Meteorological Bureau at Washington, which has two


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/144

 hundred employees at its central office, and spends over a million dollars a year for the purpose of forecasting the weather. The sheikh held up his hands in horror, exclaiming, "And all this to blaspheme the great Allah! For who but He and His Prophet Mohammed can read in the Book of To-morrow? Is it not writ in the Koran. 'And what is in the bosom of the Heavens, and what is in the bosom of Time, and what is in the bosom of woman, only Allah knoweth?" But the irate sheikh and the lacrymoselachrymose [sic] poet are gently reminded by the modern editor, who in most cases is inan [sic] aladinist, a free-thinker, that the times have changed, that the Prophet himself has said, Every Age hath its Book, and that the fabulous wealth and prosperity of America, for instance, are the natural outcome of co-operation.—They are the fruits of organized industry, O my Brothers,—they are the legitimate offspring of the Trust. Let us, therefore, co-operate like the Americans: let us organize the Trust. Science


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/145

 will yet resuscutate Arabia.—Steam and Electricity will be the servants of her virtue and glory. But let us organize the Trust, and straightway. In the Trust, O my Brothers, is our salvation.... And my friend the social reformer will find, methinks, herein some food for thought. A distant view of the question, an Oriental view, is not unworthy of consideration. For when a people hail what another people spurn, when a nation blesses what another nation is cursing, then there must be still room on one side or the other for the deeper truth, the sounder view of the matter. Some people among us will find these between the curse and the blessing. I, for one, refuse to peep with the radical reformer into the boudoir of the Trust; and I admire her not, as do the aladinists of Damascus, in her travelling toggery. But in her workaday clothes I behold her walking with the people, and I dare say she is tolerably human.

For in spite of what is set down in the Criminal Code, I am convinced that the


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/146

 Trust hath a soul. Else how could she be so fair and so wicked, so voracious withal and so bounteous? Indeed, the soul of the Trust is accumulative, even like her capital. It is a somatic soul, as it were, which you might not find mentioned in the book of metaphysics, but which the skeptic might see, and touch, and even steal thereof. Behold it exteriorized in these monumental marvels of materialism. The Soul of the Trust!—it broods in the mines; it sings in the mills; it cries in the Stock Exchange; it sweats in the fields; it throbs in the engine room; it vibrates in the electric wire; it poetizes in the Marconi mystery; it hitches its aeroplane to the dog-star. Ay, the Trust hath a soul, believe me, and it is as good as all the other trust-in-Mammon souls of the present day, which were once divine and immortal. True, it has no sentiment. But who has, in this beautiful iron age? Neither Darwin nor Carl Marx ever worried about sentiment. Capital and Thought, these are the living principles of


text: Index:United States Statutes at Large Volume 100 Part 2.djvu


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/147

 the Trust. Of these is composed the duality of her somatic soul.

And Capital and Thought will dance in triumph over the tombs of ancient kingdoms and in the valleys of sacred rivers, even as they do in the mills and mines and around the palaces and temples of Modern Industrialism. Thus sayeth my aladinist friend of Damascus, who never tires of repeating, In the Trust, O my Brothers, is our salvation. But let us hope he will be able to find the truth somewhere between his blessing and the curse of the social reformer. Or better still, beyond both. For the Trust, like all other human institutions, must soon or late outgrow its usefulness. Meanwhile there is something suggestive and useful in the enthusiasm of the Oriental. And if Europe gives Arabia a railway, Arabia gives Europe an idea. Which, I think, balances the account.


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/148

F all the places of worship I know,—and I have lugged my unshrived soul and my weary limbs into many a foreign temple,—the mosque has always impressed me as being by far the most democratic and the most unstinted in its varied hospitalities. There is nothing in it or in its economy to flatter the rich, or oft end the poor, to repel the weary, or distract the devout. The welcome it extends is not of the two-by-two pew order; the solace it affords is no bread-and-cheese affair. And the Friday sermon, if you should care to hear it, is often taken bodily from the Koran and is, therefore, never extraneous;—a ringing and harmless bit of eloquence that charms the ear and lulls the senses in celestial revery. The mosque is always big enough to hold the declaiming preacher and the sleeping worshipper in an incommunicable vacuity; for the pulpit is never


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/149

 too near the enchanted corners, which offer a shelter to the body of the Muslem as well as to his soul. And here you often find a mumbling fakir, a blind beggar, a wayworn hammal, or a wayfaring Arab. In the most informal spirit of devotion, they drop in for a rest or a snooze; and they prostrate themselves before a mihrab or stretch themselves on the cool marble under the arches, while a great sheikh or a prince of the blood in another corner is genuflecting on a precious Persian rug and swinging his torso to and fro in prayer. Bism illah irrihman irrahim! (In the name of Allah the most Merciful and Compassionate). The fakir telling his beads chants himself into a state of coma. The beggar yawns out, Ya-Allah, ya-Karim! and drops off as he kneels. The Beduin is stretched under the huge arch like a corpse. And no one is there ill-bred or impious enough to intrude upon any one in his holy occupation. The mosque is a haven of rest to beggar and prince, a temple of democracy to the Faithful, a divine hostelry for the


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/150

 children of Allah. Here the outcast finds a stone, at least, on which to lay his head. And the calm flows from the vast domes above him and fills the airy spaces all around. Only now and then it is interrupted by a sigh of ya-Allah, ya-Karim! For though the mosque be in the tinkers' bazaar seldom a sound from the outer world reaches even its court or violates its hallowed silence. And in this vastness of spiritual repose the soul may loaf and invite the body, and the mind may doze and invite the soul. Without cymbals and bells, without organ and choir, without icons and statues, but with the lamps of faith and devotion ever burning, the soul is left to itself to find its way through an infinity of unworldly calm and silence to the divine infinities of the One Supreme—Allah. One day at noon, after a long tramp through the country, I went into the little mosque of a village to rest. I doffed my shoes at the door, realizing then the deep wisdom in the tradition. There are practical as well as spiritual reasons for


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/151

 it. If it is a sacrilege to come booted into the House of God, it is worse than a sacrilege to soil with the dust and mud of the road its precious rugs. Aside from these considerations, my shoes pinched, and I was only too glad to conform. Many others, I suppose, find in the custom a like relief. Inside the mosque there were but two at prayer—a venerable old man in one corner and a wizened half-naked beggar in another. I sat down on a straw mat under an arch, leaning my back against the pillar, stretching my weary limbs,—feeling sweetly at home. Rest and relaxation, in these are the roots of purest devotion: and these you will always find in a mosque at any hour of the day, at any hour of the night. I prayed after my own fashion, and walked out with my two companions, my Brothers, praising Allah. The beggar happened to be a hammal who left his burden at the door, and being too heavy for him to lift alone, the venerable Sheikh, tucking his long silk sleeves, hastens to his assistance. Bismillah! and the hammal


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/152

 bowed in piety under his load, stiffens his neck to the rope around his head and, heavy but firm of step, walks away in the assurance of Allah. "You are not a Muslem," said the distinguished Sheikh, detecting in me an alien manner.

"I too worship Allah," I replied, lacing my shoes, "and honor the Prophets." Whereupon he invited me to his house for lunch. Strangers meeting in the mosque become brothers.

This reminds me of a visit to that American Mecca of fashion, Newport, where I went to pray in the Church of the Rich. A quaint, little wooden, barn-like building, outwardly a fitting symbol of the original spirit of Christianity, which was brought over, together with its first minister, from England. It was set up, not built, in Newport, a century ago. And this is considered very old in New England. But the stained glass windows, a distressing anomaly, with nothing in them to arrest the eye or tax the imagination, are absurdly new and


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/153

 whole. Not one of them is broken and cemented to give it the semblance of antiquity or to preserve a historic or a pious legend. Made in America, I presume. And like everything indigenous to this wonderful country, their value is measured with a golden rod. One of them was pointed out to me as being 'the thousand-dollar window' presented to the church by Mrs.——; another, even more costly, by Mr.——. It were uncharitable, indeed, to remember names in such a blaze of munificence; but I wonder how it is that those who are responsible for disfiguring the walls of this quaint and unpretentious church, have not tried to conceal their identity. I say 'disfigure' advisedly. For I can not conceive of a stained glass window set in a thin wooden wall, without some outward device of architecture to subdue the effect of the sunlight upon it,—to shade the refulgence of its beauty. But Philanthropy can not live in the shade; Philanthropy will blow its trumpet on the roof-tops in the noonday sun. Thou Brass


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/154

 Trumpet, never in those airy mosques of the silent East have I heard the faintest echo of thy shrillings. Nor did the Puritans, I suppose, ever hear it in their days.

No doubt the stained glass windows would have been tabooed by them as was the organ, which was brought over with the church. Music, like our modern brass-trumpet philanthropy, shocked their sense of piety. They could not associate it with worship. It interfered with the digestion of the soul—it promoted impiety. If the organ, which was subsequently restored, is the one I heard, than I am, too, a Puritan. And the fact that it has now an electric action, does not make it less objectionable to those who seek peace in the House of God. I may be wrong, foolish, narrow in my idea of worship; I may not have an ear for music: but I submit that no two of our poor jaded senses can be occupied simultaneously with equally good purpose and effect. The shrill cymbals of an Oriental church may tear the ear, but they do not reach the soul;


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/155

 the daf and the tomtoms of the dancing dervishes are innocuous, because of the fundamental absurdity of their scheme of salvation; the music in a modern restaurant, and though it interferes with digestion and promotes dyspepsia and profanity, has no real spiritual after-effects: but when I hear a Miserere in a Church—and all Church music to me is a variation more or less of the same theme—and think that the salvation of my soul depends upon it, I can not go on and pray. The sepulchral notes seem to dance before my eyes in their winding sheets, and the invisible choir, alas, becomes a lugubrious joke. Judge if I was sacrilegious in the Church of the Rich. Instead of praying, or following in the wake of devotion, I was counting the 'thousand-dollar' stained glass masterpieces, or marvelling at the amazing sounding board that hung above the minister's head as by a spider's thread. One day in the nick of service—Allah forgive me for the wanton vision! But the precariousness of the situation held me for


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/156

 a spell in a mingled sense of fear and excitement. What if this huge sounding board should crash upon his Reverence when he is lashing the air with his potent words. And yet, by a freak of chance, it may be the last thing to remain intact if the church were struck to-morrow by a thunderbolt or destroyed by an earthquake. Remarkable, too, are the quadrangular pews, which are big enough to hold a few arm chairs and a rocker, and which are so arranged that the worshippers can sit in them facing each other as in a drawing room. 'The vulgar rich,' the 'lazzaronis of wealth' as they are called in America by those, I suppose, who have failed to accomplish the miracle of riches or to at- tain the 'lazzaronic' state, must feel at home and quite at ease in these little drawing rooms of their church. Not with them, however, or those who denounce them, but only with the pews am I now concerned. Why should a place of worship, I venture the question, be parcelled into lots? Why not, as in a mosque, a clear


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/157

 open space, unencumbered and untaxed, where you can come and stay when you please and as long as you please? Pews mean an imposed long service, an imposed tax, an imposed restriction on one's freedom. You may want to go to church for five minutes of spiritual stimulation or for five hours of spiritual repose; in which case, locked in a pew, you must either disturb or be disturbed in following your desire. But the pews of this Newport church, I was told, are neither to be sold, nor rented, nor given away: they must be acquired. Even as an estate or a mansion or a throne, they are hereditary. No stranger, therefore, can come into this church to pray, unless, by gracious suffrage, he stand at the door. His, then, is the better chance of salvation. I shared the pew of mine host, which he must have acquired by right of conquest. For on the fly-leaf of the hymn book was written a name other than his own,—a name of one of the distinguished families of the early


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/158

 settlers, who might have descended of old England's wearers of the purple. The pew had gone through one of those social revolutions that result only in a change of name. And thus, no other name will be written on the fly-leaf of that hymn book in the future, except by the suffrage of the nobility of wealth. Snobbery this, indeed. But those who suffer from the disadvantage of riches, of whom even the Founder of Christianity has said a few mean things,—shutting them out of heaven with a parable,—ought not be grudged the right of making a little quadrangular heaven for themselves in a little church on earth, where they can commune with their God uninterrupted and undisturbed. Here, the poor rich lock themselves up for a brief spell, and no one in all the world has a right to intrude upon them in their devote moments. And they sit down in their armchairs, snug and serene, and sing the 176th hymn or the 61st psalm in perfect assurance, imbibing religion, at every pore and feeling, at peace with themselves, with the


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/159

 world, and with God. Even with the Minister, who hurls from his pulpit no Nazarine-parables of Dives and Lazarus or the Needle's Eye and the Camel. No; the Most Right Reverend respects the attitude and peace of mind of his congregation, wherefore his tenure sacerdotal would seem less precarious than the pew-privelegesprivileges [sic] of its richest member. But that colossal sounding board is hanging above him as by a spider's thread, and some day, when, in the very nick of his sermon, he is applying the divine salve, it might give the congregation a different interpretation of his Mortal Text.

Allah forgive me for what I have here set down. I came to this church to pray, not to cavil. And for those, distant and near, in present or past incarnation, who might have caused this unhappy turn of mind, I also invoke Allah's forgiveness and mercy.

The service is over. But the essential part of it we behold in the narrow street in front of the church where a squad of


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/160

 police are directing the high-lackered traffic. Slowly from many corners and by-ways invisible, it drags its length along, a train of sumptuous equipages, multicolor, multiform:—refulgent limousines adorned with classic-faced chauffeurs; shimmering victorias drawn by high-stepping, full-blooded steeds; liveried and cockaded footmen leaping from their seats to open and close carriage doors;—a bustle of vanities, a flutter of conceits,—a dazzling array of outward splendor.

Come, my Christian Brother,—come with me to the mosque.


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/424

Ford by Thomas Creede, 1598. This work was licensed to Creede on 22 Nov. 1597 (, iii. 98), and was dedicated to Sir Robert Radcliffe, the Earl of Sussex, Viscount Fitzwaters, Lord Egremond and Burnell. At the close is a recommendatory epistle from the author's friend L[azarus] P[lot], the pseudonym of Anthony Munday. The book imitated the Spanish romances. Its style was euphuistic, but its story was for the most part original. It was extraordinarily well received, and on 25 Oct. 1598 Creede obtained a license for a second part. It is called in the 'Stationers' Registers' (ib. iii. 129) 'Parismenos. The triall of true friendship,' but when published it was entitled 'Parsimenos. The second part of the most famous, delectable, and pleasant Historie of Parsimenos, the renowned prince of Bohemia,' London, 1599, and was dedicated to the Countess of Essex. Innumerable reprints of the whole work followed. In 1608 a volume was issued containing 'The First Part of Parismus' with a second title-page introducing 'Parismenos, the second part.' The latter bears the date 1609 and the words 'The third time imprinted and amended.' A fourth edition of the whole is dated 1615: others are dated 1630, 1636, 1649 (13th edit.), 1657, 1663, 1664, 1665, 1668-9, 1671, 1677, 1684, 1690, 1696, and 1704. The romance was also frequently issued in an abridged form as a chapbook without date. A reference to the work in Thomas May's 'Old Couple' (not published till 1658, although acted earlier) illustrates the book's popularity (, Old Plays, ed. Hazlitt, xii. 12; cp. Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. vi. 310). Another of Ford's romances is entitled 'The most pleasant history of Ornatus and Artesia, wherein is contained the unjust reign of Thaeon, king of Phrygia.' The Douce collection in the Bodleian Library has a copy dated 1607, dedicated to Bryan Stapleton, esq., of Carleton, Yorkshire. Heber had an imperfect copy, which he believed to have been published before 1598. Editions of 1634, 1650, 1669, and 1683 are known. The British Museum Library has none earlier than 1650. A third romance by Ford is called 'The Famous History of Montelion, knight of the oracle, son of the true mirrour of Princes, the most renowned king Persicles of Assyria.' In a jovial preface the author states that the success of 'Parismos' encouraged him to produce this work. The earliest edition now known is dated 1633. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps had in his possession at one time a copy of earlier date. Other editions are dated 1663, 1668, 1671, 1683, 1687, 1695. It also appeared frequently as an undated chapbook. Ford's title of 'Montelion, knight of the oracle,' was the pseudonym adopted by John Phillipps [q. v.], one of Milton's nephews, who issued almanacks under that name in 1660 and 1661. Flatman [q. v.] also employed the same nom-de-guerre in his mock romance of 'Don Juan Lamberto.' Both 'Ornatus and Artesia' and 'Montelion' are written on the same models as 'Parismos.' [Dunlop's Hist. of Fiction, ed. Wilson, 1888, ii. 547; Hazlitt's Handbooks; Brit. Mus. and Bodl. Libr. Catalogues.]  FORD, HENRY (1619?–1684), secretary of state, born in or about 1619, was the eldest son of Henry Ford of Bagtor in Ilsington, Devonshire, by Katharine, daughter and heiress of George Drake of Spratshays in Littleham, in the same county. He was absurdly supposed to have been grandson of John Ford the dramatist [q. v.] (, Magna Britannia, vol. vi. Devonshire, pt. ii. pp. 291-2); his grandfather was Thomas Ford, son and heir of George Ford of Ilsington (Visitation of Devonshire in 1620, Harl. Soc., p. 108). He was for a time fellow-commoner of Exeter College, Oxford (, Reg. of Exeter Coll. p. lxi), but his father dying, and his mother marrying again, he went home to look after his patrimony. With his step-father, John Cloberry of Bradstone, Devonshire, he had many hot disputes over the property, which had to be settled in the law courts. In the reign of Charles II he purchased Nutwell Court, in the parish of Woodbury, near Exeter, which he made the place of his future abode. He was put in the commission of the peace for the county, and was lieutenant-colonel, under Sir John Drake of Ash, his kinsman, in the militia for the eastern division of the shire, of which he was likewise a deputy-lieutenant. On the death of Sir Thomas Stucley he was elected member for Tiverton, 6 April 1664, and kept his seat until the dissolution of Charles's last parliament, 28 March 1681 (Lists of Members of Parliament, Official Return, pt. i. pp. 522, 535, 541, 547). Prince, who knew him well, describes Ford as 'an excellent orator,' and witty, but the single specimen he gives of his wit is by no means brilliant (Worthies of Devon, ed. 1701, p. 315). In 1669 he accompanied John, lord Robartes, the lord-lieutenant, to Ireland as secretary of state, but 'to his no little damage and disappointment' was recalled along with his chief the very next year. In 1672 Ford, having been knighted at Whitehall on 20 July in that year (, Knights, Harl. Soc., p. 279), acted in


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/161

LOWLY but eagerly, like a child, the Orient is moving towards an object of irresistible attraction. Nay, modern thought is gradually lifting it from the depths of hebetude and pious contentment up to the heights of progress and unrest. But whether progress will eventually overcome its unrest or unrest will soon or late disenchant it with progress, remains to be seen.

One thing, however, is certain. The Orient can not keep up with the modern pace of science. Swathed in cant, saturated with tradition, given to abstractions, lulled in magnifications of speech and thought, the Oriental mind can not grasp the infinity of detail as well as the scope of scientific vision. The grafting of modern ideas upon it may prove, in certain instances, the contrary; but the elements hostile to its growth and development, though not visible always on the surface, are as vital, as potent in the liberal thinkers,


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/162

 who are making an honest effort to keep abreast of the times, as in the straitlaced conservatives. Moreover, the psychology of the Orientals is essentially deductive. Which gives them, it is true, a certain sweep of vision, but deprives them of the faculty of coordination. They have yet to acquire the scientific habit of mind and to reconcile themselves to certain elemental truths about this planet, which have also a sociological and moral application. Evolution, conservation, even the law of gravity has not yet attained a decent footing among them. For they live not in the world; they live in the universe. They can see what is behind a mountain, but they can not see what is before their eyes. That is why, I think, they can better bear the burden of life. From the vantage of a sublimated resignation they see life as a whole. But that is why, too, when their vision fails or their resignation loses its divine support, they become irreconcilable, irrepressible, and absolutely irrational.


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/163

 As subjects of the State, for instance, they have behind them centuries of submission checkered by anarchy and assassination. Blindly they adhere to authority, blindly they rebel against it. Their obedience and their insurgency are both born of religion,—prompted by the fanaticism of one faith or another. To be sure, they have often risen against tyrants, but against tyranny itself, seldom or never. They can see a throne, but not the things of which a throne is made.

On the other hand, they seldom lose, entirely and forever, their heritage of spiritual wisdom. And when they find it, after a religious upheaval or a period of political devastation, it soon becomes again a vital and vitalizing power. This is true of the past. But are they now in danger of losing it forever? I said that the Oriental mind, in its present state, can not encompass the vision of science. And the Orientals to-day can only see in science, in spite of all its seductions and promised blessings, a searchlight revealing distant material goals.


text:
Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/372

From deeper founts than Time shall e'er destroy,

All spoke to thee in Summer's rich caress,

Even so my heart, though wordless too, could bless:

It could but feel a joy to know thy joy.

Letter II.—After Death's Mockery

When Death from out the dark, by one blind blow,

Strikes down Love's heart of hearts—severs a life—

Cleaves it in twain as by a sudden knife,

Leaving the dreadful Present, dumb with woe,

Mocked by a Past whose rainbow-skies aglow

O'erarch Love s bowers where all his flowers seem rife

In bloom of one sweet loving girl and wife—

Then Friendship s voice must whisper, whisper low.

Though well I know 'tis thou who dost inherit

Heroic blood and faith that lends the spirit

Strength known to souls like thine of noblest strain,

Comfort I dare not proffer. What relief

Shall Friendship proffer Love in such wild grief?

I can but suffer pain to know thy pain:

I can but suffer pain; and yet to me

Returns that day whose light seemed heavenly light,

Whose breath seemed incense rising to unite

That lawn—where every flower, and bird and bee

Seemed

title: Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/372


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/164

 And they are beginning to see also that in the rush to reach these goals thousands fall at the first spreading point of light. Which is true. For if people have the will to strive, have they the power to sustain the will?

I doubt whether the Orientals have. And I doubt too whether the Occidentals, having the power, have also the wisdom to see when that power becomes an instrument of destruction instead of progress. For even as human machines fed from the inexhaustible power-house of Civilization, there is a course which the Orientals and the Occidentals can safely pursue,—a course that will save one people from the destructive effects of rust and another people from the more destructive effects of abrasion. For indolence and strenuosity are the two poles of one evil. And if a machine in disuse is a loss, an abused machine is the forerunner of losses manifold.

But who in the Western world to-day, where accident risks are reduced to a minimum or covered by an insurance


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/165

 company, prefers to go at a reasonable, rational pace to his goal, if only to enjoy the scenery or to better enjoy the leisure moments of life?—or to be able, at least, to hear a fellow traveller who might be calling on the way for help? Who, indeed, when science, like the horned Gentleman in Faust, holds out before us every day a new temptation? And even the Oriental stands bewildered, bewitched. He would turn back, if he could. He would follow, even to the end, if he did not have to run. But he will learn to read the directions—begin even with the hornbook—and take his time about it. If he fails eventually, however, in mastering the details of science or in grasping the immense scope of its vision or in the practical use of the machinery of progress, his failure should not be looked upon as a sign of hopeless incompetence or degeneration. His failure is the triumph of something innate in him, which, in spite of his yielding to the material seductions of the times, prevents him from becoming a


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/166

 human machine. And in this failure is a lesson for the people of the West, if they would profit by it.

I said that the Oriental mind is saturated with traditions. But the Occidental mind, no matter how modern, how insurgent, is not wholly free from it. Nor can it or should it be. In fact, every nation has its traditions, which illumine its history and enrich its life. From tradition springs the flower of culture. On it chiefly depends the cultivation of the character, the customs and manners, of a people. There is this difference, however, between the Oriental and Occidental nations: the first allow their traditions to grow to seed, to run wild and impoverish the soil, while the latter seldom neglect its cultivation. In other words, the Eastern people allow their traditions to accumulate throughout the centuries, without ever attempting to reduce or overhaul the pile, while the Western people seldom hesitate to abandon what has become more or less effete in the process of acquiring or creating new traditions.


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/167

 And in this eliminating and sifting process is a lesson for the Orientals, if they would profit by it.


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/425

Ford the same capacity to Arthur Capel, earl of Essex. He did not, however, continue in office long, 'for being sent into England on some important affair, contrived by those who were willing to put him out of the way, he returned no more unto Ireland' (, p. 316). The fact was that his brusque, overbearing manner made him everywhere disliked. He died in 1684, aged 65, at Nutwell Court, and was buried in Woodbury Church (, Magna Britannia, vol. vi., Devonshire, pt. i. pp. cxcv-vi, pt. ii. pp. 291-292). He left a son Charles, supposed to have died in his minority, and three daughters, married to Drake, Holwell, and Egerton (ib. vol. vi. pt: ii. p. 571). On 22 July 1663 he was elected F.R.S. (, Hist. of Roy. Soc., appendix iv.), and remained in the society until 1682 (Lists of Roy. Soc. in Brit. Mus.)

[Prince's Worthies of Devon, 1701, pp. 314-16.]  FORD, JAMES (1779–1850), antiquary, born at Canterbury on 31 Oct. 1779, was the eldest son of the Rev. James Ford, B.A., minor canon of Durham, and afterwards minor canon of Canterbury. He entered the King's School, Canterbury, in 1788, matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, 8 July 1797, and became fellow of his college 2 June 1807. He graduated B.A. 1801. M.A. 1804, B.D. 1812, and in 1811 was junior proctor of the university. He held the perpetual curacies of St. Laurence, Ipswich, and of Hill Farrance, Somersetshire. He was subsequently presented (28 Oct. 1830) to the vicarage of Navestock in Essex, and died 31 Jan. 1850. His quaint directions (see, Memorials, p. 96) for a funeral of great simplicity were carried out when he was buried in Navestock churchyard. There is a monument to him in Navestock Church, and a portrait of him in the common room of Trinity College, Oxford. He married, on 19 Nov. 1830, Lætitia, youngest daughter of Edward Jermyn, bookseller, of Ipswich, but left no children. To the university of Oxford Ford bequeathed 2,000l. for the endowment of 'Ford's Professorship of English History,' and to Trinity College, Oxford, 4,000l. for the purchase of advowsons, as well as 4,000l. for the endowment of four 'Ford's Studentships,' two of which were to be confined to youths educated at the King's School, Canterbury. Ford was a collector and compiler on antiquarian subjects. His large collection for a new edition of Morant's 'History of Essex' is in the library of Trinity College, Oxford, and his manuscript collections for a history of bishops from the Revolution onwards were purchased by the British Museum. He was also a contributor to the 'Gentleman's Magazine' and to Nichols's 'Literary Illustrations,' vols. vi. and viii., and was the author of 'The Devout Communicant,' 1815, 12mo, and 'A Century of Christian Prayers,' 2nd ed. Ipswich, 1824, 8vo.

[Sidebotham's Memorials of the King's School, Canterbury (1865), pp. 95-8; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Nichols's Lit. Illustr. viii. 659, 668; Gent. Mag. 1848, new ser. xxx. 330.]  FORD, JOHN (fl. 1639), dramatist, second son of Thomas Ford of Ilsington, Devonshire, was baptised at Ilsington 17 April 1586. His mother was a sister of Lord-chief-justice Popham. He is probably the John Ford, 'Devon, gen. f.,' who matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, 26 March 1601, aged sixteen years (Oxford Univ. Reg. vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 246). On 16 Nov. 1602 Ford was admitted a member of the Middle Temple. In 1606 he published an elegy on the Earl of Devonshire, 'Fames Memoriall; or the Earle of Devonshire Deceased. With his honourable life, peacefull end, and solemne Funerall,' 4to, with a dedicatory sonnet to the Lady Penelope, countess of Devonshire, and commendatory verses by Barnabe Barnes and 'T. P.' Ford seems to have had no personal acquaintance with the earl or with Lady Penelope, and he is careful to state that his elegy was not written from any mercenary motive. In the course of the poem he makes mysterious allusions to a lady, 'bright Lycia the cruel, the cruel-subtle,' whose affections he had vainly sought to engage. To 1606 also belongs 'Honor Trivmphant; or the Peeres Challenge, by Armes defensible, at Tilt, Turney, and Barriers. . . . Also the Monarches Meeting; or the King of Denmarkes welcome into England,' 4to. His earliest dramatic work was an unpublished comedy entitled 'An Ill Beginning has [or may have] a Good End,' acted at the Cockpit in 1613. On 25 Nov. 1615 ' A booke called Sir Thomas Overburyes Ghost, contayneing the history of his life and vntimely death, by John Fford, gent.,' was entered in the Stationers' Register. This must have been a prose-tract or a poem, as a play on the subject would certainly have been forbidden. In 1620 Ford published a moral treatise, 'A Line of Life. Pointing out the Immortalitie of a Vertuous Name,' 12mo.

First on the list of Ford's plays in order of publication is 'The Lovers Melancholy. Acted at the Private House in the Blacke Friers, and publikely at the Globe by the Kings Maiesties seruants,' 1629, 4to, which 2


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/168

HATEVER the characteristics of the age we live in, its principal tendency is one of exchange—exchange of culture as well as commodities. We give of our surplus for what we receive of the surplus of others. And not infrequently our own products, whether of the mind or the machine, undergo, as they pass from hand to hand, a modification, a transformation, which makes them welcome again at our door. Our luxuries come back to us as necessities; our enthusiams, as firm resolutions; our ideals, as practical standards of living.

And consciously or not, something is always being done to guard against a break in the circle. One wave is followed by another and the circling stream is ever flowing between the civilized nations of the world. Apparently it dries up sometimes in certain places; but in reality it has only


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/169

 changed its direction. And now and then is a new source of abundance and overflow. And now and then too, by a mysterious interaction of forces, the stream reverses its course.

The new source to-day is America; and the mighty currents, which flowed from the East to the West in the past, are now flowing from the West to the East. There is always too a counter-current of different temperature which tempers the stream and moderates its speed. And in this is the essenseessence [sic] of exchange; in this is the assurance of the balance, the sanity, in fact, of nations.

When the stream of civilization flowed in the past from the East, the cradle of religion, the counter-currents flowed from Venice, the cradle of trade, from Cordova, the cradle of reason, from Geneva, the cradle of intellectual freedom. But these in time so increased in volume and power that they dominated, overwhelmed the original westward flowing currents. The stream, therefore, not only changes its


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/170

 course, but also its quality, its temper, its spirit.

In other words, it once flowed from the fountain head of the soul—it was essentially all soul. It flows to-day from the fountain head of the mind—it is essentially all mind. But just as it was tempered in the past with material and intellectual counter-currents, it is tempered to-day with a counter-current of spirituality.

This interaction of forces has curious results. For while the Western world is experiencing at present a spiritual revival, the East is going through the puerperal pains of nationalism and freedom. But there is a tendency in both worlds of adopting measures that the other has renounced, of accepting what has been proven to be false or impractical, of renovating and wearing what has been long discarded. Moreover, in their eagerness to imbibe the spirit of the times or to harness for their benefit both its currents and counter-currents, the Orientals are in danger of losing the most precious heritage of their


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/171

 and their culture. I spoke in the preceding chapter of the wisdom, the necessity of constantly cultivating our national traditions, of applying to them even the eliminating process. But there are certain old traditions which never become effete and which no nation can abandon with profit to itself and to the world. As the tradition, for instance, of the handicrafts in the East, which is being rapidly undermined by the introduction of modern machinery. Orientals do not realize that even in the West there is a growing protest against the universal use of the machine,—against the lethal effects of purely mechanical power. And in their eagerness to imitate us in all things, to rival us in production, they are depriving the world of the artistic and beautiful things of the Orient. Japan, where everything is being foreignized, Europeanized, is a noted example. The machine there is fast replacing the dexterous hands of the artisan; the atelier is being transformed into a factory; the merchant is usurping


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/426

 had been brought out 24 Nov. 1628. Four copies of commendatory verses are prefixed, and the play is dedicated 'To my worthily respected friends, Nathaniel Finch, John Ford, Esquires ; Master Henry Blunt, Master Robert Ellice, and all the rest of the Noble Society of Gray's Inn.' In the dedicatory epistle Ford states that this was his first appearance in print as a dramatic writer, and hints that it may be his last. Gifford rightly pronounces the comic portions of 'The Lovers Melancholy' to be despicable ; but it contains some choice poetry, notably the description (after Strada) of the contention between the nightingale and the musician. In 1633 was published ' 'Tis Pity Shee's a Whore. Acted by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants at the Phœnix in Drury Lane,' 4to, with a dedicatory epistle to John, first earl of Peterborough, to whom the dramatist acknowledges his indebtedness for certain favours. In this tragedy, of which the subject is singularly repulsive, Ford displays the subtlest qualities of his genius. The final colloquy between Annabella and Giovanni is one of the most memorable scenes in the English drama. In the same year (1633) was published 'The Broken Heart. A Tragedy. Acted by the Kings Majesties Seruants at the private House in the Black-Friers. Fide Honor,' 4to, dedicated to William, lord Craven. 'Fide Honor' is an anagram of 'John Forde.' 'I do not know,' says Lamb, 'where to find in any play a catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as this ;' but Hazlitt and others have remarked on the fantastic unreality, the violent unnaturalness, of the closing scenes. A third play was printed in 1633, 'Loues Sacrifice. A tragedie receiued generally well. Acted by the Queenes Majesties Seruants at the Phcenix in Drury Lane,' 4to, with a dedicatory epistle to the author's cousin, John Ford of Gray's Inn, and commendatory verses by James Shirley. Detached passages and scenes are excellently written, but the plot is unsatisfactory, and the characters badly drawn. 'The Chronicle Historic of Perkin Warbeck. A Strange Truth. Acted (some-times) by the Queenes Maiesties Servants at the Phœnix in Drurie Lane. Fide Honor,' 1634, 4to, with a dedicatory epistle to William Cavendish, earl of Newcastle, and five copies of commendatory verses, is the most faultless, but not the greatest, of Ford's plays well planned and equably written, a meritorious and dignified composition. It was reprinted in 1714, 12mo, when the movements of the Pretender's adherents in Scotland were attracting attention, and it was revived at Goodman's Fields in 1745. 'The Fancies Chast and Noble,' 1638, 4to, a comedy acted at the Phœnix, dedicated to Randal Macdonnel, earl of Antrim, is ingeniously conceived but awkwardly executed. From a passage in the prologue it has been hastily supposed that Ford was abroad when the play was produced. 'The Ladies Triall. Acted by both their Majesties Servants at the private house in Drvry Lane. Fide Honor,' 4to, was brought out 3 May 1638, and was published in the following year with a dedicatory epistle to John Wyrley, esq., and his wife, Mistress Mary Wyrley. The prologue was written by Theophilus Bird, the actor. There is much to admire in the first four acts, but the conclusion is strangely huddled. Pepys notices its revival at the Duke of York's theatre in March 1688. 'The Sun's Darling : A Moral Masque : As it hath been often presented at Whitehall by their Majesties Servants, and after at the Cock-pit in Drury Lane with great applause. Written by John Foard and Tho. Decker, Gent.,' 4to, was posthumously published in 1656, some copies being dated 1657. This play, which may have been an alteration of Dekker's unpublished 'Phaeton,' was licensed for the Cockpit 3 March 1623-4. The lyrical portions, which doubtless belong to Dekker, are the most attractive. From Sir Henry Herbert's 'Diary' it appears that two other plays by Ford and Dekker, 'The Fairy Knight' and 'The Bristowe Merchant,' were produced in 1624, but they were not published. 'The Witch of Edmonton ; A known True Story. Composed into a Tragi-comedy by divers well-esteemed Poets, William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, John Ford, &c.,' 4to, first published in 1658, was probably written in 1621, soon after the execution of the reputed witch, Elizabeth Sawyer. Ford seems to have contributed little or nothing to the powerful scenes in which Mother Sawyer figures, but he must be credited with no small share of the scenes that deal with Frank Thorney. In September 1624 was licensed for the stage 'A new Tragedy, called A late Murther of the Sonn upon the Mother, written by Forde and Webster,' which was not published. A copy of commendatory verses by Ford was prefixed to Webster's 'Duchess of Malfi,' 1623.

A tragedy by Ford, 'Beauty in a Trance,' was entered in the Stationers' Register 9 Sept. 1653, and three comedies, 'The London Merchant,' 'The Royal Combat,' and 'An Ill Beginning has a Good End,' were entered 29 June 1660. These four unpublished pieces were among the plays destroyed by Warburton's cook. Ford prefixed commendatory verses to Barnabe Barnes's 'Foure Bookes of Offices,' 1606, Sir Thomas


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/172

 the place of the man of talent; the quaint bazaar is becoming a market-place of brummagem; the mould is destroying the spirit of invention; and uniformity will ultimately banish the creative genius of the race. It would be a pity, a calamity, indeed, if the soul of the Oriental, which he puts into his work, were to be destroyed by the hustling, strenuous, money-making spirit of the present day West. And it would be disastrous were we in the West to abandon that noble tradition of the mind, which is the heritage of scientific research, the fruit of intellectual evolution, in an effort to grasp and acquire the stuffy and oft times pernicious occultism of the Orient. Our intellectual emancipation, with its panoply of rationalism and its bulwarks of freedom, can be preserved, however, without having to go to the extremes of pragmatism or to become absolutely material.

Machinery, or the machine-made system of living is defeating of the higher purpose of life. And to impose it upon the Orient


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/173

 is to rob its people of the principal source of all their treasures. And also of their finer qualities, their patience, ease and contentment as well as their soft and gentle manners. For even a thick layer of traditions, which may be productive, among better things, of tropic indolence and fatality, is better than no tradition at all. And as between a modern Oriental who has lost his astractive qualities, his native virtues, who has relinquished the purer spiritual heritage of his race and an Oriental of the old type, however steeped in superstition and religious cant, I, for one, prefer the latter.

But both will find new inspiration and power, if they turn, not to the gods of materialism, not to the masters of the Machine, but to the torch-bearers of intellectual and spiritual progress lighted by the higher mind and fed by the purer spirit of Europe and America. This is the noble tradition, which, in every social and political upheaval, should be preserved and upheld. It is a tradition that never becomes effete; and though only a few uphold it in


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/174

 times of stress and storm, it never fails ultimately of its purpose. For the national spirit in its purity and vigor, is the spirit of individuals representative of its traditions and its culture. This is so even in America, despite the deafening noise of its colossal machinery. Like Greece and Rome, America is developing itself from a conflux of various nations and antithetical elements. The Melting Pot certainly has a soul. And this soul will certainly have a voice. And the voice of America, it can safely be said without exaggerating potentialities, is destined to become the voice of the world. Its culture, too, its arts and its traditions, which, in spite of the present passion of Americanization, are being colored and shaded, impregnated with alien influences, will embody the noblest expression of truth and beauty that the higher spirit of the Orient and the Occident combined is capable of conceiving. They will embody also a universal consciousness, multifarious, multicolor, prismatic.


text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/427

Ford  'Wife,' 1616, Shirley's 'Wedding,' 1629, Richard Brome's 'Northern Lass,' 1632; and he was one of the contributors to 'Jonsonus Virbius,' 1638. Dyce was of opinion that the verses to Barnabe Barnes were by the dramatist's cousin. Ford drops from sight after the publication of the 'Ladies Trial' in 1639; but in Gifford's time 'faint traditions in the neighbourhood of his birth-place' led to the supposition that, having obtained a competency from his professional practice, he retired to Devonshire to end his days. In the 'Time-Poets' ('Choice Drollery,' 1656) occurs the couplet- Deep in a dump John Forde was alone got, With folded arms and melancholy hat. It is certain that he had very little comic talent. That he was a favourite with playgoers is shown by his familiar appellation, 'Jack Ford,' mentioned by Heywood in the 'Hierarchie of Blessed Angels,' 1635- And hee's now but Jacke Foord that once was John. He was not dependent on the stage for his livelihood, and his plays bear few marks of haste. In the prologue to the 'Broken Heart' he declared that his 'best of art hath drawn this piece,' and in all his work the diction is studiously elaborated. Ford's works were first collected by Weber in 1811, 2 vols. 8vo. A more accurate edition was published by Gifford in 1827, 2 vols. 8vo. An edition of Ford and Massinger, by Hartley Coleridge, appeared in 1848; and in 1869 Dyce issued a revised edition of Gifford's 'Ford,' 3 vols. 8vo.

[Memoir by Gifford, revised by Dyce, prefixed to Ford's Works, 1869; Lamb's Specimens of Dramatic Poets; Swinburne's Essays and Studies.]  FORD, MICHAEL (d. 1758?), mezzotint engraver, was a native of Dublin, and a pupil of John Brooks, the mezzotint engraver [q. v.] When Brooks quitted Ireland about 1747, Ford set up as his successor at a shop on Cork Hill. He engraved a number of portraits in mezzotint, which on account of their scarcity are highly valued by collectors. Among them were James, earl of Barrymore, after Ottway; Maria Gunning, countess of Coventry, after F. Cotes; George II, after Hudson; William, earl of Harrington, after Du Pan; Richard St. George, after Slaughter; and William III, after Kneller. He also painted portraits, and engraved some himself, viz. Henry Boyle, speaker of the House of Commons in Ireland, Henry Singleton, lord chief justice of Ireland, and a double portrait of William III and Field-marshal Schomberg, the heads being copied from Kneller. Ford's address as publisher appears on some of the mezzotint engravings by Andrew Miller [q. v.] and James MacArdell [q. v.] With the former he seems to have been in rivalry, as they engraved the same subjects, notably Hogarth's full-length portrait of Gustavus Hamilton, viscount Boyne, in which Ford's print seems to be the earlier of the two. It is probable that Ford visited London, but this is not certain. On 28 Oct. 1758 the ship Dublin Trader, Captain White, left Parkgate for Dublin, and was never heard of again; she carried 70,000l. in money and 80,000l. in goods, and numerous passengers, among whom were Edward, fifth earl of Drogheda, and his son, Theophilus Cibber [q. v.], and others. There are grounds for supposing that Ford was also among the passengers. [Chaloner Smith's Brit. Mezzotinto Portraits; J. T. Gilbert's Hist. of Dublin, vol. ii.]  FORD, RICHARD (1796–1858), critic and author of 'The Handbook for Travellers in Spain,' was the son of Sir Richard Ford, a descendant of an old Sussex family, who was M.P. for East Grinstead in 1789, and for some time an under-secretary of state, and eventually chief police magistrate of London. He died, at the age of forty-seven, on 3 May 1806, leaving a family of three children. Richard, the eldest, born in 1796, was educated at Winchester School, from which he went to Trinity College, Oxford, where he graduated (B.A. 1817, M. A. 1822). He afterwards entered at Lincoln's Inn, and read in the chambers of Pemberton Leigh and Nassau Senior, but though called to the bar he never practised. In 1824 he married, and six years later he took up his quarters with his family in the south of Spain, where he spent the next four years, and acquired his extraordinary knowledge of the country by a series of long riding tours made between 1830 and 1834 from his headquarters in the Alhambra or at Seville. Shortly after his return from Spain he bought a small property at Heavitree, near Exeter, where his brother, the Rev. James Ford, a prebendary of the cathedral, was living. He there built himself a house and laid out grounds with an artistic taste which made his residence one of the local lions of East Devon. His employment suggested an essay on cob walls, in which he traced the analogy between the earthen walls of the Devonshire peasantry and the tapia or concrete structures of the Moors and Phoenicians, and this, written in 1837, was the first of a series of articles that continued to appear in the 'Quarterly Review' until the year before his death, when


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/175

 "Every nation," says Renan, "called to higher destinies ought to form a complete little world including within it the opposite poles." And while every people has its own traditions, which differ more or less according to the national, social and historical influences acting upon them, they all find a common soil in America and an uncommon hospitality. And from these traditions, developing gradually into a homogeneity all-embracing, will spring the culture and the consciousness that will make America, not only a great national power, but, what is greater, an international entity.

The Oriental will better recognize himself in it as well as the European. They will find their spirit reflected in its prismatic nationalism. And the American, by the same token, will be mistaken for an Oriental in the Orient, for a European in Europe, though not for any other but an American at home. For his national traditions, guided by a superior international purpose, will represent the wholesome and


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/176

 vital traditions of all the civilized people of the world. And a nation with a thick layer of traditions, is, as a rule, richer in customs and more refined in manners. Hence the cosmopolitanism of the American of the future. Hence too his culture, which will harmonize with, nay, re-inforce, the culture of every race. This may take a hundred or two hundred years, but it is bound to come. It is the ultimate destiny of the Melting Pot—its future soul and voice.


text: Index:United States Statutes at Large Volume 100 Part 3.djvu


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/177

ROM the revolutionary turmoil and shifting, transitory conditions that are common to-day to both the Orient and the Occident, something is bound to arise to bridge the gulf that otherwise exists between them. The backgrounds of popular movements are different, to be sure, but the central settings are the same. The starting points are not identical, but the end in view is unmistakable in both worlds. The Oriental, under a staggering burden of traditions, is suffering from too much conformity; the Occidental, under an ever increasing burden of legislation, is suffering from too much restraint. And while the one would reform his religion, the other, his laws, the object sought by both is the freedom of the individual. But there is this difference in the aspirations of both people: the freedom of the individual is still the supreme end with the Oriental, in spite of all his present-day nationalist movements, while with the


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/178

 it is only a means to an end. Self- conscious to a degree of violence, we in the West proclaim our material needs; but the people of the East, in spite of their growing revolt, remain sub-consciously spiritual.

We have done away with religion, or the formulas, at least, of religion, which fettered and stunted the mind; we shall do away with the laws that impose upon us any material limitation or restraint. And thus, in absolute freedom only shall we succeed in the 'pursuit of happiness.' But the Oriental, however rebellious, will never look upon happiness as an object of pursuit. He is not capable of ever becoming downright material or absolutely unreligious. Now, if we do not, though enjoying absolute freedom, succeed completely in the pursuit of happiness, if we should even fail, which is a common experience, what have we, having destroyed the bridges of the soul behind us, what have we, I ask to turn to for comfort and consolation?


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/179

 Obviously, in this sense, the Oriental has the advantage. The Mohammedan, for instance, who is seeking to-day political and religious emancipation, may cease to go to Mecca on a pilgrimage, may deny the authority of the Khalif of Islam, may become a monogamist and a free-thinker, but he will continue to go to the mosque and though he has to stuff his ears with cotton against the pulpit pulings of a fanatical sheikh. He will continue to believe in Allah the author and the border-guard, so to speak, of human freedom. And should he 'pursue' happiness, instead of walking indifferently in its path, he will do so in his usual manner, that is casually, leisurely, and even circuitously. And should he fail, he has always something higher to pursue. In reverence and awe he will continue to seek the divine, which even in the darkest depths of fatalism, never loses for him its potency and grace. In India the antithesis is more pronounced—the parallel more interesting. The Hindu says, I am a part of the whole,


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/180

 which is God. The European is a part of the whole, which is the social system or the political machine. But whether as a citizen or a yogi, the individual has ceased to exist. And of the two absorbing, non-entitizing mediums, the political and the religious, no two right-thinking people will disagree as to which is nearer to the ideal of the soul. Personally, if I am to be effaced as a human entity, I prefer to submit to the spiritual process, whether it be based on a dogma, a vision, or a truth. And in this, I am not contenting myself with an illusion, as it might be supposed; on the contrary, I am pursuing the practical course of wisdom.

But complete effacement is not possible in either case. Nature is against it; super-nature, or the supreme source of the light within us, frowns upon it. I am a part of the All, but I am free. And my freedom ends necessarily where the freedom of the All, whether God or the State, begins. This deep truth, which the Mohammedan recognizes, has been overlooked


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/181

 in India and is scorned to-day in Europe and America. The anarchy of caprice prevailing in that part of the world is not better nor worse than the anarchy of thought prevalent in the western world. And strange as it may seem, the tendency of both people is to succeed each other in their failures as well as their triumphs. But the manifest destiny of the world is fortunately bound with the spirit of enlightenment and culture.

Hitherto, the political state with the Hindu, like the divine state with the European, has been more or less negligible. Hence the material supremacy of the one and the spiritual abnormalities of the other. Hence, too, the failure of both as individuals. For whether in Nirvana, in Fatalism, or in the State, the dwarfing and effacing tendency is the same. If the citizen, therefore, could be taught to appreciate the yogi's abstractions and the yogi, the citizen's political creed,—if a compromise between them and a rapport are possible,—there is hope for the accession


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/182

 of the individual to his primal state, where he will retain his pristine dignity and maintain himself as a human entity in the divine and political systems of the world, without being below or above them, subordinate or superior. He will build within their boundaries, the castle, the fortress of his freedom. But to build it on a political fiction is as bad as building it on a religious chimera. For whether as an instrument in the hands of a government or in the hands of a spiritual hierarchy, man is equally a slave. Indeed, the 'part-of-the-whole' idea, when announced and accepted as a dogma or a law, is a libel upon humankind, an insult to its innate nobility. No, the individual is not a means to an end.

What avails it to know that I am free, if I can not realize this freedom in a definite, specific existence? But can it be realized wholly by a revolt only against a hierarchy or a state? It depends upon the nature and scope of the revolt. If we are concerned in breaking the fetters that


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/183

 are fastened upon our bodies and souls by external agencies only, we are doomed to failure. But if we become aware of the fetters, which we, in the sub-consciousness of centuries of submission, have fastened upon the spirit within us and strive to free ourselves of them first, then we are certain to triumph.

For freedom of the spirit is the cornerstone of all freedom. And this can be attained only by realizing its human limitations and recognizing its divine claim. It might be said too that freedom is to spirit what gravity is to matter. It is inherent in it and limited, yea, fettered by it. To know and recognize this truth, is to rise to the highest form) of freedom. Epictetus the slave was free. Socrates in prison was nevertheless free. Jesus on the cross was absolutely free.

But this transcendentalism, some will object, is not practical with the modern spirit of progress. It is the metaphysical philosopher's idea that freedom of the spirit is only the consciousness of freedom.


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/184

 If this were so, to follow the objection, then the Hindu has attained the ideal state and our modern civilization is a hollow mockery. In a sense, this is true. But the freedom of the Hindu, who is steeped in spiritual cant and quackery, is nothing now but a sublimated resignation. Nor would he be better off, if, in his triumph of revolt, he substituted it for political freedom. His salvation, the salvation of man, is in the recognition of the divine link between the two. To detach them or to seek only the realization of one of them, has the tendency of making of man either an ogre or a myth. If the one is made the complement of the other, however, nay, if spiritual freedom is recognized as the basis of political freedom, the highest degree of emancipation is then possible. Further, to make my meaning plain., [sic] I am free to go the length of my freedom, I admit. But is it not a common human experience that doing so, I reach a point where I find myself powerless, where I realize that I am imprisoned in time and


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/185

 space? Here are my material limitations; and only knowledge or the recognition of my spiritual potentialities, can save me from the pangs of sorrow and disappointment. Indeed, there is in man an infinite possibility of spiritual development. And if only for this reason, he should not be sacrificed to the state or to a spiritual hierarchy or to the species.


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/186

URIOSITY with the Occidentals, though it degenerates at times into a vulgar inquisitiveness, is a commendable quality of the mind. It is accepted as a shiboleth of culture; it is condoned as an avowal of ignorance; it is welcomed as a bid for intellectual or even social intimacy: but it is seldom looked upon as a breach of etiquette.

But with the Orientals, curiosity is decidedly bad manners. Accept the exterior and divine the interior, is generally the prevailing humor. Indeed, the curious one is invariably looked upon with either suspicion or disdain. He is shunned as a beggar, rebuked as a thief. For the Oriental would prefer a man to pick his purse than to pick his heart or mind. Where the impulse, however, is irresistible, defying, the custom is to apply the subtle,


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/187

 method. That is why, I suppose, so much more is accomplished in a given time by the people of the western world.

The tendency in one case is to overtax the imagination, in the other, to overtax the mind. The Oriental, it might be said, grows by repression, the Occidental, by expression. But both methods, to be sure, do not exclude the possibility of a morbid growth. On the contrary, they stimulate it.

The Oriental's curiosity about nature, for instance, is transformed into superlatives of admiration. He approaches it ecstatically, poetically and revels in its external beauty and loveliness. The Occidental approaches it designedly, scientifically and tries to get at the secret of its power to transform it into material well-being. The difference is not only in the point of view, but in the procedure as well.

The reaction is not always startling, nor always agreeable. A Persian and a Parisian were dining one day with a French woman in a Paris restaurant. She was of a reticent beauty, affecting the mysterious.


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/188

 She spread a banquet of her studied demure charms before both her admirers, but was very careful not to unveil her soul. The Parisian talked to her in the argot of the French novel, which she understood and accepted at its face value; the Persian addressed her in a language of repressed emotions, which she likely misunderstood, but better appreciated. The Parisian amused her with his undisguised curiosity, the Persian attracted her with a silent something that was burrowing perhaps under her feet or secretly fingering the forbidding veil of her mystery.

And she was least likely to mistake the motive that wore a mask. She feared the Oriental, it is true, but she was fascinated by him. For she felt that to him she was, above all and beneath all, a woman and, therefore, a mystery. And as such, she should be reverently approached or austerely eschewed. The Persian's curiosity, if he had any, permitted of no other alternative. The result was that her fear and suspicion, although he did not recognize her


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/189

 intellectual attainments and her brilliancy of mind, were not devoid of a certain quality of respect, secret or expressed. And that is because he was, though obviously incurious, unquestionably sincere. The Parisian, on the other hand, though his curiosity was engaging, animating,—though he delighted in the banquet she spread before him of her intellectual charms and was lavish in his adulation,—could not but betray the insincerity that wore for its secret purpose the mask of culture. Even with the occidentals, curiosity may be complex in its origin and significance. It is the instigator of all shades of moods and manners. For whether direct or artful, it may be innate or acquired or assumed. And it may be actuated by self-interest, by pride, and sometimes by snobbery. In the first, one wishes to know and to profit by the knowledge; in the second, one seeks knowledge only to know what others ignore; while in the third, the curious one is but the slave of fashion. There is still another phase to this


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/190

 tendency of the mind. Often in society, curiosity is but a kind of espionage; it is indisputably the handmaiden of gossip. But clothed in good manners, it passes as one of the excellences of human intercourse; and not infrequently it engenders scandal and brings about the ruin of an established home or fortune.

On the other hand, there is the individual that affects an incuriousness only to impress upon us a real, or to flaunt a fictitious, superiority. When one is well travelled, well read,—has had a varied and rich experience,—has tasted of all the cups and courses of life; is as familiar amidst the superstitious squalor of Calcutta as in the high-lackered halls of London or New York; is terribly at ease with the fallaheen of Egypt as with the dons of Oxford, one's curiosity is seldom moved. But even in its latencies and repressions, in its immobility, however serene, it can be provoking, irritating. And what is worse, it can be insincere.

The gentleman in the centre of the


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/191

 drawing room, surrounded by a knot of admirers, has wonderful dignity and poise, is to the manner born. Yes, indeed. He is one of the celebrities of the day:—a poet, scholar, diplomat and an illustrious citizen of the Republic. But when you are relating in his presence some curious instance of racial degeneracy or superiority in the aborigines of Yucatan, or some idiomatic vernacular enormities of a religious revival in America, or some anthropologic anomalies in the Bulus of Central Africa, he listens patronizingly and nods with an all-knowing brow, to be sure; but when he gets back to his library, he will hasten, I promise you, to the dictionary or the encyclopedia to look up a word or a name he deliberately remembered which had escaped his circumambient comprehension. His lack of curiosity is commendable, indeed; but you wish, after having politely unbuttoned your mind and bowed before the image of his sublime reserve, that he would condescend at least to an interrogation.


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/192

 The incuriousness of the Oriental is only partly akin to this. For while the absurd gravity of the venerable sheikh might sit amidst profundities unmoved, indifferent, serene, there is little or nothing behind it to spur him to a dictionary or an encyclodia or even a book of travel. Whether in the East or in the West, there is something unpleasant, indecorous—I had almost said indecent—in the attitude of these culture-conscious princes of dignity and poise. Even at best, it is an attitude that provokes hostility. It argues against the 'sweetness and light' of culture. And when you are certain that your words in the end will cozen out of the lips of reserve but an exclamation of mashallah, you turn with alarcityalacrity [sic] to a hammal or a fakir instead; or to a dapper clerk or a grocer, when you know that your remarks are to be punctuated by Solemn Dignity with the vapidities of 'how-curious' or the vaguenesses of 'how-interesting'.


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/193

HERE is a parasite in man, which no amount of energy and labor can wholly exterminate. It creeps through the complex structure of modern life, clings instinctively to every available thread of human intercourse, and finally, like a silk worm, weaves its own cocoon in the heart only to emerge from it better armed. For no matter how abounding our energy, how productive our labors, we find at a certain stage of our achievements that external agencies, often, it is true, of our own making, are unremittingly assiduous in our service. A man of fortune can not stop his money from doing his Work; a successful man of genius can not place a ban upon his reputation; an inventor is helpless against the ever increasing activities of his invention; and even a laborer, with recognized honesty and skill, can not tell how much of his savings he actually earned with the sweat of his brow.

Thus we live more or less upon our own


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/194

 reputation or upon the reputation of our people. And often we suffer from the reactions of moral and material forces, which, passing out of our hands, become uncontrollable or are distorted in the hands of others. We give, we produce, we create; but what we receive in return is either rediculous or fabulous. Something is abroad that contributes materially to our triumph or defeat—that makes the one grotesque, the other tragic. A truthful man, for instance, may be of a people that is noted for lying and equivocation; a dishonest man may be of a race that has earned a reputation for truthfulness. Herein the parasite thrives. For to succeed, the one need not overtax his ingenuity, the other need not adhere strictly to the traditional virtue of his people. Both find resources or a name, at least, which they can freely utilize. The Oriental, though he be of the lowest quality of mind and soul, is credited with imagination and intuitive wisdom; while the Occidental's integrity, though he be a jail bird, is often


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/195

 taken for granted.

Moreover, certain Occidental minds acquire a kind of candor which is more insidious than the craftiness of Orientals. And it has the gesture of finality that characterizes the advertisement or the poster of modern times. It is an asset which no Oriental subtlety and chicanery can equal. For what is so profitable as a reputation greatly advertised? Or even so damning? The Oriental, when he tells the truth, is seldom believed. The Occidental, when he tells a lie, is seldom doubted. The naive truthfulness of the one goes for nothing, while the specious frankness of the other seldom fails of its purpose. Thus, we pay dearly for our prejudices as for our illusions. But even though we concede that truth-speaking with the Occidental is the rule, with the Oriental, the exception, we must not fail to observe the discrepancies in both standards. We are on our guard against craftiness however cleverly concealed; but we are often duped by a


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/196

 ingeniously conceived and practiced. Indeed, we suffer more from the implicit confidence we repose in the slyboot who has earned a reputation for candor and straightforward dealing. We feed the parasite in him. And it is a poor and unprofitable skepticism that only works one way. Honesty itself ceases to be a virtue when it is made a means to an ignoble end. And the Oriental, whose craftiness is often practised in self-defense, negatively, seldom regards it as a positive method, a material virtue, an instrument of success.

It was Bismark, I think, who conceived the idea of sometimes speaking the truth to deceive his antagonists. An originality in political tactics which the Oriental diplomat might well imitate, and to better advantage. And when the OrienatlOriental [sic] merchant takes to advertising, he will further realize the advantage of lapsing periodically into truth. His wonted subtlety will then become more subtle, more complex, more confounding. And the people of the West, in changing their point of view regarding


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/197

 his veracity, will be adding to his capital while he lounges resignedly upon his divan. For what virtue can not be distorted by a motive, debauched by an end? To lie in self-defense is certainly more pardonable than to lie in defending or promoting our material interests. Besides, no one is capable of pursuing an unchanging course in this or that direction: neither equivocation nor forthrightness can be made elastic enough to cover our shame or our honor. Silence alone can do that. It is certain, however, that intermittent honesty is worse than unremitting rascality; for a man who now and then is truthful that he might the better palm off his pinchback on the world, is more detestable indeed than he who lies instinctively and only incidentally tells the truth.

And the parasite is active in them both, for they both depend more or less on the fiat of an assumption. Indeed, we are all disposed to sit back at times and let our reputation do our work—the work rather of a commercial traveller, a press-agent or


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/198

 a drudge. How much, in fact, we pay for a name. And yet, a good name is a partnership between the individual and society. Nay, it is too often a Trust whose stock is watered with gumption and gullibility. The business man, the opera singer, the moving-picture actor, who start by making a high bid for our confidence or admiration and succeed in getting it, invariably end by boasting in electric superlatives on the house-tops of the city—they convert our confidence into cash. And in the end, we find ourselves paying more for the clap-trap and flamboyancy than the real object they herald—more for the 'blurb' than the song.

It is not so bad in the Orient, where a name is not a substantial element in values. A Persian rug, for instance, is a Persian rug and not one made by the great Mirza of Shiraz. But the Orientals, as I said, are fast acquiring the trick of sophistication. And what is worse, they are inclined now and then to make truth-speaking an overture, at least, to their dealings. But


text:
Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/199

 whether with them or with us, a certain degree and form only of the truth, is more pernicious indeed than falsehood itself. Once in Damascus I saw a merchant selling an English tourist some ancient coins, which were probably made in Germany. Their patina seemed authentic and real. They even smelled of the earth. But the merchant sorted them out into two lots, carefully sifting and examining, and finally said, These are false, my Lord, these are genuine. And he swore by Allah and the Prophet that he was speaking the truth. Which was quite unexpected by the tourist, who was much impressed. He was in fact taken in. For by admitting that some of the coins were not genuine, the wily shop-keeper was able to sell to mylord some of the others, which were equally false. I spoke with him afterwards and he admitted to me—told me the other half of the truth—that the European who sold him the antiquified coins taught him also the trick.


text: Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/200


text: Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/201


text: Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/202


text: Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/203


text: Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/204