I have tried to convey my sympathy and admiration for Eastern art and its admirers,and if I have not conveyed them I must give it up and go on to more general considerations.I therefore proceed to say--with the utmost respect,that it is Cheek,a rarefied and etherealised form of Cheek,for this school to speak in this way about the mother that bore them,the great civilisation of the West.The West also has its magic landscapes,only through our incurable materialism they look like landscapes as well as like magic.The West also has its symbolic figures,only they look like men as well as symbols.It will be answered (and most justly)that Oriental art ought to be free to follow its own instinct and tradition;that its artists are concerned to suggest one thing and our artists another;that both should be admired in their difference.Profoundly true;but what is the difference?It is certainly not as the Orientalisers assert,that we must go to the Far East for a sympathetic and transcendental interpretation of Nature.We have paid a long enough toll of mystics and even of madmen to be quit of that disability.
Yet there is a difference,and it is just what I suggested.The Eastern mysticism is an ecstasy of unity;the Christian mysticism is an ecstasy of creation,that is of separation and mutual surprise.The latter says,like St.Francis,"My brother fire and my sister water ";the former says,"Myself fire and myself water."Whether you call the Eastern attitude an extension of oneself into everything or a contraction of oneself into nothing is a matter of metaphysical definition.The effect is the same,an effect which lives and throbs throughout all the exquisite arts of the East.This effect is the Sing called rhythm,a pulsation of pattern,or of ritual,or of colours,or of cosmic theory,but always suggesting the unification of the individual with the world.
But there is quite another kind of sympathy the sympathy with a thing because it is different.No one will say that Rembrandt did not sympathise with an old woman;but no one will say that Rembrandt painted like an old woman.No one will say that Reynolds did not appreciate children;but no one will say he did it childishly.The supreme instance of this divine division is sex,and that explains (what I could never understand in my youth)why Christendom called the soul the bride of God.
For real love is an intense realisation of the "separateness"of all our souls.The most heroic and human love-poetry of the world is never mere passion;precisely because mere passion really is a melting back into Nature,a meeting of the waters.And water is plunging and powerful;but it is only powerful downhill.The high and human love-poetry is all about division rather than identity;and in the great love-poems even the man as he embraces the woman sees her,in the same instant,afar off;a virgin and a stranger.
For the first injustice,of which we have spoken,still recurs;and if we grant that the East has a right to its difference,it is not realised in what we differ.That nursery tale from nowhere about St.George and the Dragon really expresses best the relation between the West and the East.
There were many other differences,calculated to arrest even the superficial eye,between a saint and a dragon.But the essential difference was simply this:that the Dragon did want to eat St.George;whereas St.George would have felt a strong distaste for eating the Dragon.In most of the stories he killed the Dragon.In many of the stories he not only spared,but baptised it.But in neither case did the Christian have any appetite for cold dragon.The Dragon,however,really has an appetite for cold Christian--and especially for cold Christianity.
This blind intention to absorb,to change the shape of everything and digest it in the darkness of a dragon's stomach;this is what is really meant by the Pantheism and Cosmic Unity of the East.The Cosmos as such is cannibal;as old Time ate his children.The Eastern saints were saints because they wanted to be swallowed up.The Western saint,like St.
George,was sainted by the Western Church precisely because he refused to be swallowed.The same process of thought that has prevented nationalities disappearing in Christendom has prevented the complete appearance of Pantheism.All Christian men instinctively resist the idea of being absorbed into an Empire;an Austrian,a Spanish,a British,or a Turkish Empire.But there is one empire,much larger and much more tyrannical,which free men will resist with even stronger passion.The free man violently resists being absorbed into the empire which is called the Universe.He demands Home Rule for his nationality,but still more Home Rule for his home.Most of all he demands Home Rule for himself.He claims the right to be saved,in spite of Moslem fatalism.He claims the right to be damned in spite of theosophical optimism.He refuses to be the Cosmos;because he refuses to forget it.
