APPEARANCES.°

Tan travels of a philosopher are always interesting, if only lie has the gift of language. Mr. Lowes Dickinson, as is well known, has this gift in a high degree. Two books by this master of style lie before us at the present moment, a big one and a little one. The first contains a number of short essays, the second a single long one, and both are concerned with his journeyings round the world. He has passed through the East and through the West, and with graceful modesty be offers to the public "not Reality, but appearances to me." These appearances cannot fail to interest the reader, whether they confirm his own convictions and preconceptions er whether they do not. A comparison between the civilizations of the West and the East is, in truth, the subject of all the essays, but this essential consideration is often hidden beneath the moods and experiences of the traveller. Our author takes us upon his flying carpet to India, China, and New York, and with him we visit Hindu sages, Buddhist temples, Chinese villages, and New York suburbs. If we merely dip into his books, we shall come away with the impression that his object is to glorify the East at the expense of the West. If we read the essays as a whole, we shall see that at heart be is still a Western, though he frankly admits that when he writes of the West a note of exasperation which he would silence if he could sounds through his pages and detracts somewhat from their value. Nevertheless, as we have said, he sums up in favour of the West, and he believes that the East is becoming, and ought to become, Westernized. "This Western civilization, against whioh I have so much to say, is nevertheless the civilization in which I would choose to live, in which I believe, and about which all my hopes centre."

But though Mr. Dickinson is glad that the West should influence the East, he is horrified by the "appearance" of that influence. Everywhere that Western man has been he leaves ugliness behind him. " Many men, I know, sincerely think that this destruction of beauty is a small matter, and that only decadent aesthetes would pay any attention to it in a world so much in need of sewers and hospitals. I believe this view to be profoundly mistaken. The ugliness of the West is a symptom of a disease of the Soul." The Western soul as it appears to him is ugly. As it appears in America it is hideous, and he believes that to describe the average Western man you must describe the American. There, ha thinks, you get " the fundamental type, growing in a new soil." The American, he declares, is the " European stripped bare, and shown for what he is, a predatory, unreflecting, naïf, precociously accomplished brute." He is, we are told, intelligent without being intellectual, "quick-witted and crass, contemptuous of ideas but amorous of devices, valuing nothing but success, recognizing nothing but the actual, Man in the concrete, undisturbed by spiritual life, the master of methods and slave of things, and therefore the conqueror of the world, the unquestioning, the undoubting, the child with the museles of a man." Mr. Dickinson's pen runs away with him. It is a dangerous thing to write so well. Soon the note of exasperation dies out. There is nothing, be assures us, but average people in America, none who soar. Yet Walt Whitman wrote of the Divine Average, and the recollection. of his genius gives pause to our author's rhetoric. " Or is it. divine? " he suddenly asks. " Divine somehow in its poten-, tialities ? Divine to a deeper vision than mine?" It would.

• (1) appearances: being Notes of Travel. By G. Lowell Dickinson. London : J. M. Dent and Bona. [4s. Cd. net.]—(21 An Ereay on the Civilisation/ at Indsa. China, and Japan. Ewe° author and publishers. [1.8. net.]

net be fair to this brilliant writer not to pat beside this picture another which be has drawn of the Western man. This time his model is an Englishman

"He is kind-hearted—much more so than he cares to admit. And at the bottom of all his qualities he has the sense of duty. He will shoulder loyally all the obligations he has undertaken to his country, to his family, to his employer, to his employees. The sense of duty, indeed, one might say with truth, is his religion. For on the rare occasions on which he can be persuaded to broach such themes you will find, I think, at the bottom of his mind that what he believes in is Something, somehow, somewhere, in the universe, which helps him, and which he is helping, when he does right. There must, he feels, be some sense in life. And what sense would there be if duty were nonsense? Poets, artists, philosophers can never be at home with the Englishman. His qualities and his defects alike are alien to them. In his company they live as in prison, for it is not an air in which wings can soar. But for solid walking on the ground he has not his equal. The phrase Solvitur ambulando ' must surely have been coined for him. And no doubt on his road he has passed, and will pass again, the wrecks of many a flying-machine."

As all those who have read John Chinaman know, the civilization the " appearance" of which best. pleases Mr. Dickinson is the Chinese civilization. All the same, his

highest praise for the Chinaman is summed up in this, that his soul is a Western soul. He is far more like us, or so he appears to Mr. Dickinson, than he is like the native of India. No sooner is our author surrounded by Mongolians than he

feels as if an oppressive cloud had lifted. The atmosphere of India is the atmosphere of a temple, but upon China the sun shines. In China "it is broad daylight; but in India, moon or stars, or a subtler gleam from some higher heaven." "The Chinese ar•e, and always have been, profoundly secular, as the Indians are, and always have been, profoundly religious," he declares. Waves of religion, he admits, go over even the most secular nations and leave a "deposit." Buddhism at one time poured across China, but neither Buddhism nor Taoism, in his opinion, has ever- suited the Chinese, "any more than Christianity has suited the European." Con- fucianism alone suits the Chinaman, and we doubt whether

Mr. Dickinson does not believe at the back of his mind that it is the religion which would best suit us—" Confucianism, with its rationalism, its scepticism, its stress on conduct." But is it ever possible to say that any people have adopted a religion which did not suit them ? Might not our author

with advantage amplify his theory of a " deposit" ? Religious emotion, like every other emotion, is in some sense transient;

but we would point out that this is true of individuals as of nations. Not very many men or women could be described as being very religious during their whole lives, but the deposit left by past emotions is of immense value. "Once in grace always in grace," said Cromwell. What Westerner ever took the Sermon on the Mount seriously? asks our author. It would be perfectly true to say that very few Westerners have ever acted on it; but are conduct and religion interchangeable terms even for the Westerner? The modern moralist and the modern religionist take great pleasure in declaring that they are; but surely those who have penetrated into " the City of Man- Soul " mast know that they are not. Men's minds are profoundly modified by doctrines which they never put into practice.

But we have been digressing. Our author has plenty of reasons, besides their moral materialism, to give in defence of the theory that the Chinese are the Westerners of the East, All their fundamental thoughts resemble, he thinks, the thoughts of the modern European. The Chinaman has no caste. He is a democrat. He believed in equality of oppor- tunity before the Englishman was born or thought of, and he believed in it during the period when the Englishman

believed in the opposite theory of feudalism. His art bas- so Mr. Dickinson says—a radical affinity with the European

art of to-day, and his poetry recalls the poetry of Wordsworth. Moreover, he is capable of being Westernized by Western environment in a manner impossible to any Eastern race except the Mongolian. Chinese students in Western Univer- sities appear to take on the whole intellectual outfit of their fellow-students. Even the Mongolian type of face pleases Mr. Dickinson. In speaking of the Japanese he says:— "And the people are lovely, too. I do not speak of facial beauty. Some may think, in that respect, the English or the Americans handsomer. But these people have the beauty of life. Instead of the tombstone masks that pass for faces among Anglo-Saxons, they have human features, quick, responsive, mobile. Instead of the slow, long limbs creaking in stiff integumente, they have active members, for the most bare or moving freely in loose robes. Instead of a mumbled, monotonous, machinelike emission off sound, they have real speech, vivacious, varied, musical."

The note of exasperation sounds again. We refuse to be per-. suaded by these almond-eyed " appearances.*

We gather that India same to our author as something of a disillusionment. India to him is typical of a spirit with which he is not in sympathy. "The closed temple, I believe, is a true image of the spiritual life of India." All that he sees of India confirms his view. " Everything seems to point to this —the symbolic character of Indian art; the absence of history and the prevalence of religious legend ; the cult of the fakir and the wandering ascetic." India lives in presence of eternity, and whoever• so lives must undervalue the affairs of time: "There are in Man two religious impulses, or, if the expression be preferred, two aspects of the religions impulse. I have called them the religion of the Eternal and the religion of Time ; and India I suggest stands pre-eminently for the one, the West foe the other, while the other countries of the East rank rather with the West than with India. It is not necessary to my purpose to exaggerate this antithesis. I will say, if it be preferred, that in India the emphasis is on the Eternal, in the West on Time. Bah that much at least must be said and is plainly true. Now, as between these two attitudes. I find myself quite clearly and definitely on the aide of the West."

But if Mr. Dickinson does not sympathize with India, it is of India that he writes his best. At Burupndur be meditates

beside a statue of Gautama, and puts the questions which must arise in the heart of the Western man when he con- templates the face of the great teacher:— "For a long time I was silent, meditating his doctrine. Then I spoke of children, and he said, They grow old.' I spoke of strong men, and he said, 'They grow weak.' I spoke of their work and achievement, and he said, They die.' The stars came out, and I spoke of eternal law. He said, One law concerns you —that which binds you to the wheel of life.' The moon rose, and I spoke of beauty. He said, ' There is one beauty—that of a soul redeemed from desire.' Thereupon the West stirred in me, and cried "No I" Desire,' it said, ' is the heart and essence of the world. It needs not and craves not extinction. It needs and craves perfection. Youth passes; strength passes ; life passes. Yes ! What of it? We have access to the youth, the strength, the life of the world. Man is born to sorrow. Yes ! But he feels it as tragedy and redeems it. Not round life, not outside life, bub through life is the way. Desire more and more intense, because more and more pure; not peace, but the plenitude of experience. Your foundation was false. You thought man wanted rest. He does not. We at least do not, we of the West. Wo want more labour; we want more stress ; wo want more passion. Pain we accept, for it stings us into life. Strife we accept, for it hardens us to strength. We believe in action ; we believe in desire. And we believe that by them we shall attain.'" We do not apologize for quoting at such length. It would have been a sin to mutilate the passage, and it contains the essence of our author's work. In it we see his judgment upon life. Whether it is a true judgment, or• one made after appearances, it is for the reader to decide.