Volume II Part 12 (2/2)
DEAR HENDRICK,--”Thou shalt not love” is of Buddha ”He who hath wife and child hath taken upon hireater than that which thea cavern, reatest of all fear is the fear for another,--the pity for another,--the frightful is of sorroant or despair for another But there ht be perfect conditions That is true;--but then,--beware the jealousy of the Gods A Rossetti finds his Ideal Maiden, weds, loses, ret, and his days in writing epitaphs Children may console and they may sha,--and they may ruin us; and at best, in the world of the West, they separate from us, and we can keep only ets hold of their heart and bites it, and the poison spreads a veil between parents and offspring for all time Finally, in any conditions, the burthen of life is enormously increased How much more must a man bear, and how much less can he assert himself, when he has ever to re to hi It is not all wrong
L H
TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
AUGUST, 1893
DEAR HENDRICK,--What you wrote about the char_ with her nized the portrait in a ht sent me off into a reverie about--adulteration
There is a philosophy about adulteration I don't know much about I have not sufficiently learned the main facts about the practical and utilitarian side of adulteration,--though I read the ”petit dictionnaire des falsifications,” and other things However, let's try Most of e sell now is adulteration We used to feel angry, when I was a boy, at the enuine leather,--shoddy for wool,--cotton mixed with silk for pure silk, etc We wanted our spoons to be genuine silver, and our claret quite trustworthy Since then we have had to resign ourselves to lucose, and other products which have becoenuine has been altogether supplanted by the false; and the false has been universally accepted with full knowledge of its origin There have been advantages enormous to industry and manufacture, of course; and the public health has not been ruined, according to prediction On the contrary it has been i
Nowon in ourthe sham for the real It is very sorrowful and excites awful surmises; but nevertheless the shainal article was its cost and its enormous solidity It was not malleable It resisted pressure It was not adapted at all to the new life of cities and science For example, absolute veracity interfered with business,--absolute love became a nuisance, took up too much space, and proved too incompressible Just as we have become too sensitive to bear the rawness of pure colour, so have we become too sensitive to bear the rawness of pure affection
We consider persons vulgar ear blood-red, grass-green, burning yellows and blues--persons of undeveloped feeling and taste So also we begin to think people vulgar who are prone to live by any simple emotions We hold the No: ant shades, tones,--imperceptible tones, ethereal shades Even in books the raw ee Pure passion is penny-theatrical Isn't all this a suggestion of fact? And isn't the fact founded upon necessary physiological changes? Existing life is too complex for pure emotions We want mixed tonics,--delicately flavoured and tinted
All of which otten Love, honour, idealis motives They interfere with more serious necessities, and with pleasure We have first to learn how to live inside the eight-day clock of s This learned,--and it is no easy lesson,--we e in some falsifications of emotion, some shot-silk colours of love Such seems to me the drift The most serious necessity of life is not to take the moral side of it seriously We enuine is only good for the agricultural districts
And is this progress in a durable sense, or morbidness in evolution?
Really I am not sure
Ever affectionately, LAFCADIO HEARN
TO SENTARO NIshi+DA
kuust, 1893
DEAR NIshi+DA,--I havevacation; but, as I anticipated, it could not be helped Another bundle of proofs has been keeping er than I told you intype that will spread it out to probably 750 pp I send you one specimen proof--just to show you the size of the type
The man who has been sent for to fill the place in Kyoto, will not, I iine, be able to keep it He is a rabid proselytizer; in kuo, he foret the japanese name): that is why the Kyushu folk nearly killed hireat changes in the Kyoto et there_ But there is nothing sure I will not go to Tokyo as long as I can help it
Many thanks for your splendid letter about the legends of the ballads
I have put it away carefully to use in a future essay--You say, if you were to tell s the co fact would give me work for two or three months The publishers wrote me to say they want stories of the life of the co on _conduct_: that is, Buddhist, shi+nto, and ancestor-teaching I have been trying to get the facts about the poor girl who killed herself in Kyoto because the Eustly mourned” after the crazy action of Tsuda Sanzo; but I have not yet succeeded By the way, I think Tsuda Sanzo will be eneration His crime was only ”loyalty-run-mad” He was insane for the hest value in a good cause and ti representative of the awful Pohich ainst which Western Europe has mustered an arht he saw (perhaps he really _did_ see: time only can show) the Enemy of japan Then he struck--out of his heart, without consulting his head He did very wrong;--he made a sad mistake; but I think that man's heart was noble and true, in spite of all his foolishness He would have been a hero under happier circumstances
[Illustration: [japanese]]
I have just heard that the naane-bun-bun_, and the _hyakusho_ call the, ”Come back the day-before-yesterday” Then they never come back at all
[Illustration: [japanese]]