Volume II Part 11 (2/2)

Now the Oriental sees Nature in no such way His language has no gender

He does not think of a young girl when he sees a palm, nor of the lines of a beautiful body when he sees the undulations of the hills

Neither does he see Nature as raphical nos as they are The immediate inference would be that he finds less enjoyment in them But his art shows that he finds _more_ He sees in Nature much that we can't see at all He sees beauty in stones,--in co water, shapes of trees, shapes of insects In my friend's alcove is a stone When you can learn that that stone is in to understand that there is another way of seeing Nature In e stones Their value is seven hundred dollars

No Aive five cents for theift--no! he would consider hihly insulted by the offer! Then why are they worth seven hundred dollars? Because they are beautiful You would say: ”I can't see it!” You can't see it because you see all Nature through the idea of woman And it is just faintly possible (I don't say certain) that our way--your way of seeing Nature is all wrong It is like peeping through an at iridescent and deflects the lines of for at Nature hest,--besides the plain fact that it is not according to the Eternal order of things? I suspect it because the evolution of the ideal has been chiefly physical It has not been an ideal of soul Is the soul of a woman more beautiful than that of a man--outside of limpse of two souls--excuse the personal question (for it is a highly iest and deepest?--in which were the glories more profound and radiant? And is it not essential that the woman-beauty of soul must be the lesser; for its scope must be limited by its eternal duty We are in the presence, however, of the undeniable fact that we rarely get gliher possibilities of the ht of every ho like fireflies We think only of the lights we see The circling darknesses are opaque to us,--like burnt-out suns

Reading over the list of things in your notebook I was i that i that you do not look for the highest,--that you s The obtrusive, the eccentric, the sharply bitter, the ”Distorted Souls” as you call them, naturally compel attention first,--just as in real life the forward, the selfish, the aggressive, force thehest possible value, as a means of self-preservation, to understand them But I suspect that it is of no value at all to draw theive them artistic treatment _except in a contrast-study_ They are not beautiful They are not good They are, using the word in the Miltonic sense, obscene--like owls On the other hand the beautiful in life ht, and coaxed, and caressed to make it show its colours It does not appear very often spontaneously Yet I feel convinced it is all about us It travels on railroads too, and lodges at hotels It fights for life against ugliness and wickedness and apathy and selfishness: it is Orainst Ahriman Nohat is the artist's moral duty? (Of course he reat in it) But what is his duty in the eternal order of things, to art and to ethics? Is it not to extract the gold from the ore,--the rubies and eh at her ideals are created We advance only by new ideals

I don't old, or a table, like that of sole emerald But I think that inonly when their lightness, worthlessness, or rudeness brings out in higher relief the light of the pure jewel, the weight of the pure ravity And in the order of research I would seek the lodes and veins first;--the rest is always easy to find and handle, though requiring much scientific skill, of course, to use artistically

There _is_ a world, I suppose, almost as barren as the Alkali Plains, where convention has strangled all feeling, and where the developrowths But either below this world or above it there are Aht, and beauty--continents chained to each other by snow-peaks, watered by Amazons and Mississippis

Below, I think, more than above,--for the nearer to Nature, the nearer to truth And the value, artistically, of our high-pressure civilization seeedies infernal give an opportunity for the grandest contrasts ever made What I would pray you to do is ”to put a lily in theone of Carlyle's phrases Then the petals of the lily will change into pure light, like those of the Lotus of Amida Buddha

Good-bye, with affectionate wishes,

LAFCADIO HEARN

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

kumAMOTO, July, 1893

DEAR HENDRICK,--To continue froht havein my half-criticism of the contents of your notebook I don't wish you should think I find any fault with them _per se_ Indeed you cannot set down tooonly shadow-and-fire material You have no sky-blues,--no rose and violet and purple and gold-yellow,--no cadive theht for ten darknesses, it will be enough to illuotis baby-clothes,--funny little japanese baby-clothes All the tender Buddhist divinities, who love little children, have been invoked except one,--he who cares for thearatulation come from all directions, and queer, pretty presents; for the announceladness in japan And one the is that the child will look ners, because the father is dark

Behind all this, of course, there is a universe of new sensations,--new ideas,--revelations of things in Buddhist faith and in the religion of theAbout the world an atmosphere of delicious, sacred navete,--difficult to describe, because rese in the Western world--So away gradually I have only so that I trust the Gods will be kind to us

This summer I shall not be able to travel far First, of course, I can't leavealone; second, I have proofs to correct; third, I a We have now nearly 3500 between us; and I want to try to provide for her as soon as I can,--so that once the chances of ill luck are off es to other places east of japan The Chinese ports are only a few days distant; and there is Manila, there is the French Orient to see I hope to be able to do this in a few years etting grey,--er than I was at thirty

Professor Chamberlain and I have a secret project in hand,--a book on japanese folk-lore Whether we can carry it out I do not know; but if the dear Professor's health keeps up we shall do soether

Ever faithfully, LAFCADIO HEARN

TO SENTARO NIshi+DA

kuot your kind letter,--and the money,--and the ballads; for all of which a thousand thanks I feel you have been very, very kind in all this, even while you were sick: so that nify little of what I really feel towards you It has givenbetter; but I a unable to travel,--very much disappointed, as I fear I will not be able to leave kuards Kyushu compared with Tokyo, you take the moral aspect of the question, while I have possibly been ruled too much by the artistic side I cannot fully understand the moral side, of course: I can only perceive that the Kyushu students are allowed to dress as sial and frank, and rough in their sports,--and are generally said to be extremely independent and what you call _katai_, isn't it? But whether they are really any better than Matsue students, I don't know Certainly they have no pleasures to soften their o And Kyoto is the htful city in the whole of japan However, I suppose it has also teerous sort

I had no luck with kued to send the boy back to Oki, after he had worried and made unhappy everybody in the house He was an extraordinarily clever boy,--both at school, and at everything he undertook,--extreent But he had no affection at all, and see He was strictly honest, and trustworthy,--for all that But his character was supres about people, and sang the a s to do some literary work Your ballad of Shuntoku-maru proved quite useful to me in the course of an essay I wrote on the difficulty experienced by japanese in understanding a certain class of English poetry and fiction It revealed a popular conception of things,--that ballad, which I took for an illustration, in showing the total unlikeness of Western to Oriental society--especially in the fa and woman-worshi+p which we have in the West Indeed I think the great difficulty of lish is chiefly due to the predoe, our art, and our whole conception of Nature Therefore the Oriental can see aspects of Nature to which we remain blind

LAFCADIO HEARN