Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West/Part Second, 7
VII
CHANGE AND EXCHANGE
WHATEVER the characteristics of the
age we live in, its principal tendency
is one of exchange—exchange of culture
as well as commodities. We give of our
surplus for what we receive of the surplus
of others. And not infrequently our own
products, whether of the mind or the
machine, undergo, as they pass from hand
to hand, a modification, a transformation,
which makes them welcome again at our
door. Our luxuries come back to us as
necessities; our enthusiams, as firm resolutions;
our ideals, as practical standards
of living.
And consciously or not, something is always being done to guard against a break in the circle. One wave is followed by another and the circling stream is ever flowing between the civilized nations of the world. Apparently it dries up sometimes in certain places; but in reality it has only changed its direction. And now and then is a new source of abundance and overflow. And now and then too, by a mysterious interaction of forces, the stream reverses its course.
The new source to-day is America; and the mighty currents, which flowed from the East to the West in the past, are now flowing from the West to the East. There is always too a counter-current of different temperature which tempers the stream and moderates its speed. And in this is the essense of exchange; in this is the assurance of the balance, the sanity, in fact, of nations.
When the stream of civilization flowed in the past from the East, the cradle of religion, the counter-currents flowed from Venice, the cradle of trade, from Cordova, the cradle of reason, from Geneva, the cradle of intellectual freedom. But these in time so increased in volume and power that they dominated, overwhelmed the original westward flowing currents. The stream, therefore, not only changes its course, but also its quality, its temper, its spirit.
In other words, it once flowed from the fountain head of the soul—it was essentially all soul. It flows to-day from the fountain head of the mind—it is essentially all mind. But just as it was tempered in the past with material and intellectual counter-currents, it is tempered to-day with a counter-current of spirituality.
This interaction of forces has curious results. For while the Western world is experiencing at present a spiritual revival, the East is going through the puerperal pains of nationalism and freedom. But there is a tendency in both worlds of adopting measures that the other has renounced, of accepting what has been proven to be false or impractical, of renovating and wearing what has been long discarded. Moreover, in their eagerness to imbibe the spirit of the times or to harness for their benefit both its currents and counter-currents, the Orientals are in danger of losing the most precious heritage of their civilization and their culture.
I spoke in the preceding chapter of the wisdom, the necessity of constantly cultivating our national traditions, of applying to them even the eliminating process. But there are certain old traditions which never become effete and which no nation can abandon with profit to itself and to the world. As the tradition, for instance, of the handicrafts in the East, which is being rapidly undermined by the introduction of modern machinery. Orientals do not realize that even in the West there is a growing protest against the universal use of the machine,—against the lethal effects of purely mechanical power. And in their eagerness to imitate us in all things, to rival us in production, they are depriving the world of the artistic and beautiful things of the Orient. Japan, where everything is being foreignized, Europeanized, is a noted example. The machine there is fast replacing the dexterous hands of the artisan; the atelier is being transformed into a factory; the merchant is usurping the place of the man of talent; the quaint bazaar is becoming a market-place of brummagem; the mould is destroying the spirit of invention; and uniformity will ultimately banish the creative genius of the race. It would be a pity, a calamity, indeed, if the soul of the Oriental, which he puts into his work, were to be destroyed by the hustling, strenuous, money-making spirit of the present day West.
And it would be disastrous were we in the West to abandon that noble tradition of the mind, which is the heritage of scientific research, the fruit of intellectual evolution, in an effort to grasp and acquire the stuffy and oft times pernicious occultism of the Orient. Our intellectual emancipation, with its panoply of rationalism and its bulwarks of freedom, can be preserved, however, without having to go to the extremes of pragmatism or to become absolutely material.
Machinery, or the machine-made system of living is defeating of the higher purpose of life. And to impose it upon the Orient is to rob its people of the principal source of all their treasures. And also of their finer qualities, their patience, ease and contentment as well as their soft and gentle manners. For even a thick layer of traditions, which may be productive, among better things, of tropic indolence and fatality, is better than no tradition at all. And as between a modern Oriental who has lost his astractive qualities, his native virtues, who has relinquished the purer spiritual heritage of his race and an Oriental of the old type, however steeped in superstition and religious cant, I, for one, prefer the latter.
But both will find new inspiration and power, if they turn, not to the gods of materialism, not to the masters of the Machine, but to the torch-bearers of intellectual and spiritual progress lighted by the higher mind and fed by the purer spirit of Europe and America. This is the noble tradition, which, in every social and political upheaval, should be preserved and upheld. It is a tradition that never becomes effete; and though only a few uphold it in times of stress and storm, it never fails ultimately of its purpose.
For the national spirit in its purity and vigor, is the spirit of individuals representative of its traditions and its culture. This is so even in America, despite the deafening noise of its colossal machinery. Like Greece and Rome, America is developing itself from a conflux of various nations and antithetical elements. The Melting Pot certainly has a soul. And this soul will certainly have a voice. And the voice of America, it can safely be said without exaggerating potentialities, is destined to become the voice of the world. Its culture, too, its arts and its traditions, which, in spite of the present passion of Americanization, are being colored and shaded, impregnated with alien influences, will embody the noblest expression of truth and beauty that the higher spirit of the Orient and the Occident combined is capable of conceiving. They will embody also a universal consciousness, multifarious, multicolor, prismatic.
"Every nation," says Renan, "called to higher destinies ought to form a complete little world including within it the opposite poles." And while every people has its own traditions, which differ more or less according to the national, social and historical influences acting upon them, they all find a common soil in America and an uncommon hospitality. And from these traditions, developing gradually into a homogeneity all-embracing, will spring the culture and the consciousness that will make America, not only a great national power, but, what is greater, an international entity.
The Oriental will better recognize himself in it as well as the European. They will find their spirit reflected in its prismatic nationalism. And the American, by the same token, will be mistaken for an Oriental in the Orient, for a European in Europe, though not for any other but an American at home. For his national traditions, guided by a superior international purpose, will represent the wholesome and vital traditions of all the civilized people of the world. And a nation with a thick layer of traditions, is, as a rule, richer in customs and more refined in manners. Hence the cosmopolitanism of the American of the future. Hence too his culture, which will harmonize with, nay, re-inforce, the culture of every race. This may take a hundred or two hundred years, but it is bound to come. It is the ultimate destiny of the Melting Pot—its future soul and voice.