22 OCTOBER 1927, Page 18

THE WEST AND TRANSMIGRATION

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Your correspondent "S. L. T." asks why transmigration should be of the very essence of the oriental mind and so foreign to Western thought. Climate invites the Oriental to brood and compels the Western to act. It is impossible to brood without transmigration suggesting itself, and impossible to act on so fragile a suggestion. Hence Eastern literature is full of it, Western practically empty. But virile Eastern nations, like Arabs and Jews, would have none of it ; if held at all, it was by men of the Herod Antipas stamp.—I am,