Egbert felt a wave of compassion. Of course he understood. Naturally. Still, like Pharaoh, he hardened his heart. He reflected for a moment, and then he said, loftily: "Well, I suppose I'd-er-I'd better be getting back to the hotel. I've got to pack." Everything seemed to be as dismal as ever. In fact, things were worse-much worse than ever. "I suppose I ought to explain." "Oh, not at all," said Egbert, politely. Besides, he really ought to pack; he was, of course, sailing the end of the week. Thank God! And then he felt a very desperate, hopeless feeling, as if the bottom happened to be falling out of everything. Explanations are singularly difficult sort of things. He hailed a passing taxi. "Here you are," he said. "It is hot, isn't it?" observed Miss McQuaill, rather inconsequentially. "Won't you give me a cup of tea somewhere or other. I'm-er-I'm feeling rather-" "Well, I ought to pack," Egbert remarked, with immense private satisfaction, "but"-he assisted Miss McQuaill into the taxi with great politeness, and then glanced at her, smiling radiantly"but," he continued, briskly, "I won't." And he didn't, either that afternoon or the next. As a matter of fact, when the Olympic sailed at the end of the week that very happy young man's name did not appear on the large and distinguished first-class passenger list; he was having tea (for the fourth consecutive afternoon) with Miss McQuaill in the most comfortable corner of the McQuaill library. Explanations are very difficult sort of things, anyhow. OMISSION BY MARGARET WIDDEMER POOR soul! You never could be friends with me; You never could be friends with anyone And yet you sought for friendship feverishly, And love and praise, till praise and love were done. And sang and leaped before us like a child Who tugs his mother's skirts with, "See! oh, see!" You watched the world give lightly everywhere The things your proud pains could not buy nor keep- You thought we did not know that striving there, WISE MEN FROM THE EAST AND WISE MEN FROM THE WEST BY ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY THERE is an Oriental mind and there is an Occidental mind. They are two distinctive types of mind. The twain may meet, but they never can be so joined together that they cannot be put asunder. The difference between them is like the difference between the metals; it is constitutional. It is, of course, possible to Orientalize an Occidental and to Occidentalize an Oriental by permanently transplanting him in early youth to the new environment and thus giving him a new birth and nurture. But you cannot change the fundamental traits of a race by simply subjecting that race to the "influences" of another. For many centuries the East has been invaded by the West and intermittently placed under its dominion. In successive waves the "superior culture" of the West has flowed over the more ancient and passive East. The Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, and the more recent imperialistic Gaul and Saxon colonizers have, all of them, sought to awaken the East from its deep slumber and lead it to the fresher springs of their own respective civilizations, but to little purpose. The horse has been led to the water, but could not be made to drink. In the process of the centuries that hoary Orient threw off the thin veneer of alien civilizations as a healthy person throws off a cold, and resumed the even tenor of its way. India, Syria, Egypt, and the other North African countries of to-day will no more effectively yield their souls to their modern yielded their inner being to Greece and than their predecessors "civilizers Rome. The Oriental mind cannot be said to be utterly unchangeable. It is flexible and can imitate when it wills. But it seems, during its inconceivably long history, to have tried "all things" and firmly decided to be conservative, or at least not to allow itself to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine that blew from the yet youthful and restless West. The Oriental mind is essentially submissive and contemplative, while the Occidental mind is essentially aggressive and experimental. Whether in the deep or shallow places of life, the Oriental lives in a mystical world. Nature to him is a hive of living powers and is full of surprises. He has always reveled in his mystical contemplation of it, and never faced it as a scholar to whom nothing is too awful, too sacred to be investigated. Such temporary things as forms of government have never seriously engaged his attention. The ruler, or king, has been to him a transient symbol of divine authority. In a political sense the Oriental has never cried, "Give me liberty, or give me death." His liberty was to be achieved in the inward man. Whenever he has cried against the oppression of rulers his voice has been directed "unto the Lord," and not unto the people. It is not possible within the scope of this article to present an exhaustive comparison between the Oriental and the Occidental modes of thought and life. To the East, life on the whole has been an inheritance; to the West, an evolution induced by persistent personal effort. The one has been a mystical contemplator of what is, as it is revealed by the creative power; the other, an inquirer into nature's laws and a dissector of its body. As a result the Easterner has become the religious teacher of the whole world, and the Westerner its political and intellectual liberator. The civilization of the one rests on agriculture and religion, the civilization of the other on industry · and education. The further result has been that for many millenniums of civilized existence the Oriental has by thought and act maintained religion as the center of his individual and collective life, while with the Occidental, especially the Teuton and the AngloSaxon, religion is slowly becoming one of life's interests and is in danger of becoming one of life's minor interests. In this pre-eminently industrial and political age it may be sufficient for me. to compare the Oriental with the Occidental with reference to the age's most absorbing interests, and finally to venture an opinion as to how the East and the West may, to their mutual benefit, become partners in the building up of a true civilization. He Perhaps it was because of ecstatic devotion to his dreams and visions that the Oriental has succeeded in setting bounds and limits to his inventive genius and, consequently, to his material wants. Throughout his long and significant history he has been a tool user. has known almost nothing of machinery. His own hands fashioned his tools for him, and the products of his simple industry have been manifestations, even extensions, of his personality. The foundation of his civilization has been agriculture. The thought of "the possible failure of the iron and coal deposits" has never invaded his mind or disturbed his repose. So long as the earth yields him food, and heaven visions, he feels that the strength of the hills is his. Machinery with all it brings in its train has never existed for the son of the East to draw him away from his quiet, meditative life. His simple and intensely human occupations have always kept him in touch with his home, his church, and his friends. His little shop, and often his home, is his "factory." In that humble abode friendly intercourse goes hand in hand with labor. The shop is never so inviting as when the friends are there beguiling the hours with gossip, parable, and story. Westerners often say that you never tire looking at a rug, a piece of embroidery, carved wood, or beaten brass of Oriental make. No, you never do. It is like looking at a waterfall, or a flowerdotted meadow. The fruits of the Oriental's labors are the fruits of his soul. In his handiwork centuries of domesticity and prayer are reflected. Patience, repose, skill, sorrow, laughter, are there, also. "In the name of God” he begins his task, and with "praise be to God" he ends it. He is never harried by "rush orders" nor lashed by the demands of the "merit system,' nor distracted by the smell of factory oil and the growling whir of machinery. His leisurely labor is an extension "of soul and transference of personality. This is why fine Oriental wares seem more like human companions than material possessions. The Oriental has never classified pleasure and duty in a specialized sense and on the basis of priority. Pleasurable living has always been a duty with him, and duty that which at any given moment tended to make more singable the poetry of life. He works to live, and decidedly hates to think for a moment that he lives to work. The way in which the storekeepers of my native town transacted business is one of the romantic memories of my youth. At times when I was sent on an errand to the chief store in the town I would find it closed. The storekeeper had guests on that day and he was at home entertaining them. The gain of trade was good, yet utterly insignificant when compared with the joy of having his friends gathered under his roof and around his table. Thus, with no perpetual economic adjustments and readjustments to cram his life with vexing cares and problems, the son of the East has succeeded for these many centuries in maintaining religion as the center of his home and the simple social order in which he lives. For more than a hundred centuries his religious festivals have provided him with intellectual, social, and religious stimuli. His ruler has been to him a transient symbol of divine authority, the skilled worker an outlet of the divine mind, the educated man a repository of spiritual wisdom. The function of the learned man is not simply "to be fit to do something" in a technical or commercial sense, but to be "a guide to the blind, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes." Unlike this has the Occidental's course been in history. His aggressive tendencies have blossomed in every field of endeavor. His delight has been that of the militant explorer, rather than the subjective thinker; the dauntless assailant of life's obstacles, rather than the passive suppliant before Heaven. And while he has by no means been unmindful of the inner life and the "house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," he has given his greater energies to the subduing of the earth. In contemplating the wrongs of life he has not given himself wholly to patience and prayer. His comparatively short history, especially that of the Anglo-Saxon, has been a record of persistent resistance to what he has considered to be evil. As a nation builder the Anglo-Saxon has the whole world in his debt. For at least six hundred years he has been the leader of the seekers of political freedom. He has signally triumphed in making the foundation of the State rest on the legitimate, God-given rights of man, woman, and child, and secured the safety of commerce and the freedom of education and of worsh`p. He The Occidental has been and is a man of many inventions. The forces of nature have become his tools. The VOL CXLIV.-No. 859.-11 66 genius of his education is revolutionary. Wherever he sets his foot he proceeds to change the face of the earth and to build, not on the ancient foundations, but according to his most recent vision of what ought to be. With him the past is forever forced forward. No sooner does he discover a law of nature than he uses it so as to compel nature to yield him more riches and power. He has objectified his knowledge in huge cities of a most complex life, in great and varied industries, and vast systems of transportation and communication. His inventive genius has placed in the centuries' line of succession the great ‘age of machinery." And machinery has relieved toil of much of its drudgery, made possible man's many brilliant victories over nature, on earth, sea, and in the air, revealed the hidden riches of the earth, greatly facilitated the diffusion of knowledge, brought the nations of the earth closer together and worked for physical cleanliness in home and city. So in place of the Oriental's slow-going camel, ox, and ass, the West has put the soulless, but lightninglike railway train, automobile, and airplane; in place of leisurely wielded hand tools, made still slower by the pleasant interruptions of visiting friends, the flashing shafts of machinery; instead of germinfested homes and towns, a sterilized environment; instead of a few handwritten scrolls, hosts of finely printed books which no man can number; in place of dreams and visions, calculating intellectual alertness. Certainly there is a vast difference between the Oriental mind and the Occidental mind. Compared with the latter the former seems decidedly primitive. The great achievements of the Occidental in the tangible world are dazzling, even to the passive Oriental. He also feels at first tempted to consider those achievements as the elements of true civilization. And well might he suspect that the Occidental has outdistanced him in the expansion of his mind and the enlargement of his personality. Yet speculative argument as to which civilization is the better one, the Occidental or the Oriental, is of little value. The common ground of thought and deduction here is the fact which is accepted by both the East and the West, namely, that the real value of human life is to be found in its spiritual tendencies and achievements, and in no other. The progress of civilization must forever be measured, neither by tools nor by machinery, necessary as these may be, but by the greatness and perfectness of those agencies which tend to make the spiritual life lovable and attractive. When the achievements of the mind in the fields of education, industry, and commerce tend to make firmer the spiritual foundation of life, individual, domestic, and social, and enable men increasingly to give themselves to spirit ual culture, then we have true civilization. Otherwise we have only big dividends; we are not growing better, we are simply going faster. The Oriental, as I have already intimated, cannot escape being dazzled by the Occidental's great achievements. Nor does he consider them to be wholly and grossly materialistic. He sees in them a revelation of heroism, eagerness for knowledge, and a strong and deep passion for freedom, law, and order. Before such accomplishments the son of the East feels himself to be insignificant. He is led to believe that he has been asleep for these many centuries, that while his submissiveness to the heavenly vision has been an unspeakable gain to him and to the world at large, his passive attitude toward this tangible world has been a decided loss. Yet a clearer view of the tumultuous activities of the aggressive Westerner gives the Easterner pause. He soon perceives that ceaseless battling with this material world, however heroic it may be, is not an unmixed blessing; that excessive aggressiveness, like its opposite, tends in the end to thwart its own purpose, and the will to conquer, unless its goal is spiritual, leads to defeat. The Occidental is a man of many inventions, but with the increase of his inventions the center of his life is steadily shifting from the religious to the economic. With him intellectual alertness and commercial prudence are constantly gaining on the spirit of true piety. With no organized opposition to religion on his part, he is losing touch with it because his hands are full of other things. The upbuilding and perfecting of the agencies of true civilization-the home, the church, the school, and other spiritual institutions are no longer his chief concern and his "meditation day and night." He has high regard for them, but is too busy to serve? them devotedly. The man, even in this country, which traditionally isneither indifferent nor opposed to the spiritual verities, is very little in the church, the home, and the school. He is in business. He is more ready to serve those great and indispensable institutions with his money than with his person. He has turned them over to the woman, and is in grave danger of the folly of believing in the possibility of a one-sex religion and a one-sex civilization. At present Business is the central word in his vocabulary. He even is strongly inclined to measure national greatness by the yield of the fields and the mines and the output of industry. Human skill, the schools, the government, the press, and what not exist to promote technical knowledge and business progress. "International understandings" must be promoted in order to prepare the way for more business, the League of Nations must be established for the purpose of "stabilizing international business,” and even war and peace negotiations are being used by him as cataclysmic means for the opening of new markets and the greater extension of business. Thus through deeper reflection the high admiration on the part of the Oriental for the achievements of the Occidental mind is sobered. He sees that the Westerner's fine, systematic |