The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume II Part 12

TO OCHIAI

k.u.mAMOTO, August, 1893.

MY DEAR OCHIAI,--It has given me much pleasure to hear of your success at the examinations. I wish you all good fortune for the coming year, and good health to aid you.

I want also to talk to you about another matter very much to your interest. Please pay attention to my words, and think about them. I only wish your happiness;--therefore remember that what I say deserves your attention and your thought.

I want to talk to you about Christianity, as a religion,--not as a _shu_, or sect. I hope you will understand the distinction I make.

A religion is a moral belief which causes men to live honestly and to be kind and good to each other. A sect is made by a _difference_ of belief as to what is true religious teaching. Thus in Buddhism there are many sects or _shu_; and in Christianity, there are also many sects or _shu_. But it is not what makes the sects that has made Buddhism. Neither is it what has made the Christian sects that has made Christianity. Truth makes a religion--moral truth; sects are made by differences of opinion about the meaning of _kyo_, or the meaning of other sacred texts.

So much for this. I want now to tell you, as your friend, that it is _not_ Christianity to refuse to bow before the portrait of the Emperor, or before the tombs of the great dead. If anybody tells you that is Christianity,--that person is not a Christian, but a bigot, and an enemy of his country. Whenever we sing the English national anthem, we take off our hats. Whenever we enter into the presence of one of Her Majesty's representatives, we take off our hats. We stand up to drink Her Majesty's health. We are taught that the Queen rules by divine command. It is the same in Germany, in Austria, in Italy, in Spain,--in all except republican countries. So much for that. It is quite right, even for a Christian, to bow before the Emperor's picture;--it is loyal, n.o.ble, and good to do it. To refuse to do it is ignorant and vulgar. It is not Christian at all.

Now about the question of tombs and temples. What is the Christian custom? The Christian custom is to pay proper and just respect to the religion which other people believe in. If I go into a Christian church,--although I am not a Christian,--I must take off my hat. If I go into a Mohammedan mosque, I must take off my shoes. Such tokens of respect are purely social,--they are just and right. In Mexico, for example, when a religious procession pa.s.ses, everybody who is polite takes off his hat. That means,--"Although I am not of your religion, I respect your religion,--your prayers to heaven, and your wish to be good."

Again, when a funeral goes by, we take off our hats. That means, "Although none of _my_ friends have died, I sympathize with your sorrow." It is courteous and it is right.

Whatever you believe, my dear Ochiai, you need never refuse to show respect to the tomb of an Emperor, to the memory of an ancestor, or the religion of another people or another country. Christianity teaches no such discourtesy. Only bigots teach it,--and even they teach it for reasons you are not able to understand. I do not want to question your religious belief at all;--that is not my duty. I want only to talk to you about social action in reference to _real_ religion. No honest religion ought to cause you any unhappiness, or to cause you to be blamed by others. Religion ought to be of the heart. It is not a question of hats and shoes. Do not refuse to show respect to honest customs and honest reverence for ancestors, by a bow, or a removal of the hat. It will injure your prospects in life to make ill will for yourself by refusing to show respect to the beliefs of your nation and country. Such respect has nothing to do with your faith;--it is a question of social politeness and gentlemanliness. And when you refuse, you will not be judged for your belief,--not at all. You will simply be thought vulgar,--not a true gentleman.

A true gentleman respects _all_ religions. That is the real Western idea. Do not deceive yourself.

This from your true friend and teacher,

LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

k.u.mAMOTO, August, 1893.

DEAR HENDRICK,-- ... And now for a letter. Your last two letters were full of curious things that call for no answer, but, in connection with foregoing ones, certainly invite comment. More and more, reading your lightning-flash glimpses of life, I think how terribly tragical modern life is becoming. What is its law? Is it not something like this?--

General: (1) Theoretically, you must be good. (2) Practically you must be not very good,--unless you wish to starve or live in the slime. (3) Reconcile these facts very intelligently, without making any blunders.

Special: (1) If you are not more intelligent than the average man, you must be both theoretically and practically good,--and resign yourself to remaining poor and despised all your blessed life. Don't kick: if you do, you'll die! (2) In proportion as you are more intelligent than your fellow man, the more to your interest to depart from abstract moral rules;--the more, indeed, you _must_. It is quite true that vice and crime lead to ruin. Still, you must perform your part of both without getting into trouble. If you don't, you will die. (3) Reconcile intelligently these seeming contradictions.

The contradictions can only be fully recognized and reconciled through a profound knowledge of social conditions, not in the abstract only, but in the most complex operation. This is the theoretical recognition. But the practical recognition requires special hereditary gifts,--intuitions,--instincts,--powers. Mere education in business alone won't do. That only makes servants. Masters must be _natural_ masters of men. Life is an intellectual battle, but not a battle to be fought out by mere chess-combinations. It is also a battle of characters. The combinations required for success are of the most difficult--comprising force, perception, versatility, resource,--and enough comprehension of morals as factors in sociology to avoid fatal mistakes. He who has all this, and strong health, goes to the top. But he has there to fight for his standing-room. Besides all other fighting, he has to fight against himself.

In the Buddhist system, the soul, by self-suppression and struggle against temptation, obtains Light and effects progress. The Past begins to be remembered, the Future to be foreseen. But always in proportion to the progress and the enlightenment, the temptations increase. For example, one reward of virtue is beauty and high s.e.xual power (!) The more indulgence is despised, the greater these gifts. The Soul reaches heaven. Then is the greatest of all temptations. Life for thousands of ages,--supreme beauty and power,--supreme loveliness of celestial beings offered to feast upon. And here can be no _sin_: it is only a question of further progress. Indulgence means retrogression. The wise only pa.s.s to Nirvana.--Now I fancy the battle of life has the same moral.

It is a terrible battle now, though; and is becoming fiercer every year,--and aggravating with a velocity beyond all precedent. (I see there is a falling-off in the birth-rate of the U.S.--which means increased difficulty of living.) And ultimately what must come out of all this? Pain is certainly the only reliable creator,--the only one whose work endures. Extraordinary intelligence and, mental dynamical power will be results, of course,--up to a certain time. I do not see much likelihood, however, of _moral_ development. Indeed, as Mackintosh long ago said, morals have been at a standstill since the beginning of history: we have made no apparent progress in that. Then comes the question, Are we not developing immorally?

I have begun to think immorality must be, in the eternal order of things, a _moral_ force. That is, some kinds of it,--the aggressive kinds: those which the whole world agrees to call immoral. For the physical value and excellence of a life in its relation to other lives is primarily in its capacity to meet all hostile influences by changes correspondingly effected within itself. This is called adaptation to environment. If this be the physical side of the question, what is the moral side? That the perfect character must be able to oppose or to meet all hostile influences by corresponding changes within itself. This necessarily involves a prodigious experience of evil,--a deep, personal, intimate, artistic, loving knowledge of evil. I see a frightful dualism only in prospect. No love or mercy outside of the circle of each active life. As Spencer holds, absolute morality can only begin where the struggle for existence has ceased. This is not new. The appalling prospect is this,--How infinitely worse the world must become before it begins to improve at all!--And surely education ought to be conducted with a knowledge of these things.

But will the existing state of things continue indefinitely? Surely, it can't! It is too monstrous, and the suffering too infernal! There must be social smashings, earthquakes, chaos-breakings-up, recrystallizations to lighten the burthen. And what will these be?

I cannot send you, because there is no copy here, but I recommend you a book,--Pearson's "National Character," a study. He takes the ground that the future is not to the white races,--not to the Anglo-Saxon. I think this almost certain. I think of the awful cost of life to the white races,--the more awful cost of character. I think of the vast races of creatures--behemoths and megatheriums and ichthyosaurians--which have disappeared from the earth simply because of the cost of their physical structure. But what is the physical cost of even the structure of an ichthyosaurus to the cost of the structure of a master of applied mathematics! It costs one educated European,--receiving, say, a salary of $100 a month,--exactly as much as it costs twenty educated Orientals to live--each with a family of at least three persons,--or in other words 1 European = 120 Orientals. There is an instinctive knowledge, perhaps, of the future, in the instinctive hatred of the Chinese in America. There is an instinctive sense of the same kind in the feeling which prompts the Oriental to exclude Europeans. The latter _over_live the former; the former underlive the latter. But in all this there are complicated physiological questions extraordinary.

Ever affectionately, LAFCADIO HEARN.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

k.u.mAMOTO, 1893.

DEAR HENDRICK,-- ... "Thou shalt not love" is of Buddha. "He who hath wife and child hath taken upon him fear. Such a fear is greater than that which the man should feel who, unarmed and alone, entering a cavern, meets a tiger face to face." It is true, the greatest of all fear is the fear for another,--the pity for another,--the frightful imaginings of sorrow or want or despair for another. But there might be perfect conditions. That is true;--but then,--beware the jealousy of the G.o.ds. A Rossetti finds his Ideal Maiden, weds, loses, maddens, and pa.s.ses the rest of his nights in tears of regret, and his days in writing epitaphs. Children may console and they may shame,--and they may die just when they have become charming,--and they may ruin us; and at best, in the world of the West, they separate from us, and we can keep only memories of them. Some woman or some man gets 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 a.s.sert himself, when he has ever to remember that he has ceased to belong to himself. Such is a Buddhist view of the thing. It is not all wrong....

L. H.

TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK

AUGUST, 1893.

DEAR HENDRICK,--What you wrote about the charming person "_flirting_ with her maternal instincts" is delicious. I recognized the portrait in a most fantastic past experience,--but of that anon. The thought 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 "pet.i.t dictionnaire des falsifications," and other things. However, let's try. Most of what we sell now is adulteration. We used to feel angry, when I was a boy, at the mere thought that leather-composition should be sold for genuine 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 margarine, glucose, and other products which have become vast staples of commerce.

In some cases the genuine 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 improving, and the nervous system developing.

Now may not the same thing be going on in our morals? Or rather, must it not go on? We are subst.i.tuting the sham for the real. It is very sorrowful and excites awful surmises; but nevertheless the sham seems to do very well. The trouble with the original 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 who wear blood-red, gra.s.s-green, burning yellows and blues--persons of undeveloped feeling and taste. So also we begin to think people vulgar who are p.r.o.ne to live by any simple emotions. We hold them undeveloped. We don't want the real thing. No: we want shades, tones,--imperceptible tones, ethereal shades. Even in books the raw emotion has become distasteful, savage. Pure pa.s.sion 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 means that the primal sources of life are becoming forgotten. Love, honour, idealism, etc., these can no longer be supreme or absorbing motives. They interfere with more serious necessities, and with pleasure. We have first to learn how to live inside the eight-day clock of modern life without getting caught in the cogs. This learned,--and it is no easy lesson,--we may venture to indulge 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 must play with it, as with an _hetaira_.

The genuine 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 NISHIDA

k.u.mAMOTO, August, 1893.

DEAR NISHIDA,--I have missed you very much this long vacation; but, as I antic.i.p.ated, it could not be helped. Another bundle of proofs has been keeping me at work; and I find the book promises to be bigger than I told you in my last letter. They are using type 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 imagine, be able to keep it. He is a rabid proselytizer; in k.u.mamoto, years ago, he formed a society of Christians, called the Christian Band (I forget the j.a.panese name): that is why the Kyushu folk nearly killed him. Privately--between you and me--I think there will be great changes in the Kyoto middle school next year; _and I think that I shall get 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 me about the n.o.ble things the common people do, you would never get done. Indeed, _one_ strong fact would give me work for two or three months. The publishers wrote me to say they want stories of the life of the common people _to-day_,--showing the influence of moral teaching on _conduct_: that is, Buddhist, Shinto, and ancestor-teaching. I have been trying to get the facts about the poor girl who killed herself in Kyoto because the Emperor "augustly mourned" after the crazy action of Tsuda Sanzo; but I have not yet succeeded. By the way, I think Tsuda Sanzo will be more kindly judged by a future generation. His crime was only "loyalty-run-mad." He was insane for the moment with an insanity which would have been of the highest value in a good cause and time. He saw before him the living representative of the awful Power which makes even England tremble;--the power against which Western Europe has mustered an army of more than 15,000,000 of men. He saw, or thought he saw (perhaps he really _did_ see: time only can show) the Enemy of j.a.pan. 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 n.o.ble and true, in spite of all his foolishness. He would have been a hero under happier circ.u.mstances....

[Ill.u.s.tration: [j.a.panese]]

I have just heard that the name of one kind of those horrid beetles in k.u.mamoto is _gane-bun-bun_, and the _hyakusho_ call them _gane-bu_; and people throw them out of the window, saying, "Come back the day-before-yesterday." Then they never come back at all.

[Ill.u.s.tration: [j.a.panese]]