Volume II Part 15 (1/2)
Of course in so corrupt a country as America the pecuniary side of the question is attended with so; but that is done before the money is placed in the hands of the directors, and is done at a serious risk In some American States, too, the text-books are ht be quite possible in japan to adopt a syste the schools from the power of the Kencho tolike per is so unpermanent and unsteady that one feels the tendency is to dissolution rather than integration
Ever very truly yours, LAFCADIO HEARN
P S I forgot your question about the summer vacation I have not yet been able to decide exactly what to do, but it is at least certain that I go to Tokyo, and that I hope to , I may try to meet you elsewhere I should like to see you, and hear sos you used to tell me,--which you will read in that much-delayed book By the way, I did not tell you that the publishers concluded to delay it again, on account of what they call the trade-season I suppose they are right, but it is very provoking Including the index the book es, in two volumes Meantime I have half written a philosophical book about japanese life
Ever faithfully, LAFCADIO HEARN
TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
ku, 1894
DEAR HENDRICK,--Are you reading the _Atlantic_ at all? There is a wonderful story by Mrs Deland, ”Philip and his Wife” Philip's wife makesable to live What a plague it is! And the pain of life isn't hunger, isn't want, isn't cold, isn't sickness, isn't physical misery of any kind: it is simply moral pain caused by the damnable meanness of those who try to injure others for their own personal benefit or interest That is really all the pain of the struggle of life
Ever faithfully, LAFCADIO HEARN
TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
kumAMOTO, May, 1894
DEAR HENDRICK,--I think there was one mistake in the story of OEdipus and the Sphinx It was the sweeping statement about the Sphinx's alternative It isn't true that she devoured every one who couldn't answer her riddles Everybody meets the Sphinx in life;--so I can speak from authority She doesn't kill people like ot the marks of her teeth in a number of places on my soul She meets me every few years and asks the same tiresome question,--and I have latterly contentedher, ”I don't know”
It now see in a former letter to you about business morality: I took much too narrow a view of the case, perhaps The comparison between the Western and Oriental brain--which everybody is forced to make after a few years' sojourn here--now appears toin its results The Western business man is really a very terrible and wonderful person He is the outcome, perhaps, of a mediaeval wish For types are created by reatest teaching of science is that no Body made us,--but we made ourselves under the s, the business s who asked Jupiter for a King) In the age of robber-barons, racks, sworde_,--men prayed Jupiter for Law, Order, System Jupiter (in the shape of a very, very earnest desire) produced the Business man He represents insatiate thirst of doressive capacity, faultless practical perceptivity, and the art of handling men exactly like pawns
But he represents also Order, Syste of the Earth The pawns cry out, ”We are not pawns” But he always politely answers, ”I aree with you, but I find it expedient for our mutual interest to consider you pawns; besides, I have no tiue the matter If you think you are not pawns, you anization”
The tyranny of the future anization: the monopoly, the trust, the co supremely perfect mathematical unification of Law, Order, and System
Much ne, or Barbarossa, these are infinitely less hu no souls, etc (What would be the use of souls!--souls only waste tierous and powerful like a colossal dyna men used to pray for,--and it is _not_ what they did _not_ pray for Perhaps they would like the robber-baron better
We little petty outsiders--the gnats hovering about life--feel the world is changing too quickly: all beco methodical as an abacus There isn't any more room for us Competition is of no use Law, Order, and Syste us,--the editorial desks, the clerkshi+ps, the Government posts, the publishers' offices, the pulpits, the professorshi+ps, the sinecures as well as the tough jobs Where a worker is unnecessary, a pawn is preferred (Oh, for a lodge in soular supply of reading fro is dead sure: in another generation there can be no living by dreae in the luxury of writing books for their own pleasure
Faithfully ever, LAFCADIO HEARN
TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
kumAMOTO, May, 1894
DEAR HENDRICK,--So far fro, they are always full of interest--first, simply because they are _your_ letters; secondly, because they tell the evolution of you--showing how, after all, we are made by the eternal forces That you become a business man, in every sense of the word, is inevitable It would be wrong if you did not It would be wrong not to love your profession The evil of beco a business man exists only for small men--dries sret--except perhaps a teht later on
Some would say to you, ”Always keep one little place in your heart fro of the kind now: I think you are too large to be talked to in that way
[Illustration]
Suppose I try to illustrate by reference to the scope of huht be represented then as an inverted pyrale]; hard, skeptical science by a larger figure, pressing it down; the highest philosophy by a circle,--soht accepts all, surrounds all, absorbs all,--like light itself The ugly and the beautiful, the ignorant and the wise, the virtuous and the vile,--all conition; nature and sins as well as societies and clubs,--prisons and churches, brothels and houses The very duties of observation forced upon you cos: the study of all moral and material details; the study of all corasp of the whole the larger must become your power and value; for you will have to see eternal laorking down out of the unknown and thereafter ra into innurations, and crystallizations The horrible thing about business, ht becoh,--you _must_ look upon men as pawns To be a brother to all you cannot To be a friend to ent--not of the Coent of infinite laws; and if you act efficiently in that capacity, you cannot do very wrong The Cosmos will be responsible for you