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diff --git a/42735-0.txt b/42735-0.txt index 613dff4..941fae6 100644 --- a/42735-0.txt +++ b/42735-0.txt @@ -1,38 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Exotics and Retrospectives, by Lafcadio Hearn - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Exotics and Retrospectives - -Author: Lafcadio Hearn - -Release Date: May 18, 2013 [EBook #42735] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXOTICS AND RETROSPECTIVES *** - - - - -Produced by Henry Flower and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42735 *** EXOTICS AND RETROSPECTIVES @@ -5885,362 +5851,4 @@ Sûtra (and sûtra) and Sutra (and sutra) End of Project Gutenberg's Exotics and Retrospectives, by Lafcadio Hearn -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXOTICS AND RETROSPECTIVES *** - -***** This file should be named 42735-0.txt or 42735-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/7/3/42735/ - -Produced by Henry Flower and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm -concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared -with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project -Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. -unless a copyright notice is included. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Exotics and Retrospectives - -Author: Lafcadio Hearn - -Release Date: May 18, 2013 [EBook #42735] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXOTICS AND RETROSPECTIVES *** - - - - -Produced by Henry Flower and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - - EXOTICS AND - RETROSPECTIVES - - BY LAFCADIO HEARN - - LECTURER ON ENGLISH LITERATURE - IN THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY. TŌKYŌ - - _AUTHOR OF_ “OUT OF THE EAST,” - “GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN,” _&c._ - - [Illustration] - - BOSTON - - LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY - - 1914 - - - - - _Copyright, 1898_ - BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND CO. - - _All rights reserved_ - - - Printers - S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A. - - - - -All but one of the papers composing this volume appear for the first -time. The little essays, or rather fantasies, forming the second part of -the book, deal with experiences in two hemispheres; but their general -title should explain why they have been arranged independently of -that fact. To any really scientific imagination, the curious analogy -existing between certain teachings of evolutional psychology and certain -teachings of Eastern faith,--particularly the Buddhist doctrine that all -sense-life is Karma, and all substance only the phenomenal result of -acts and thoughts,--might have suggested something much more significant -than my cluster of _Retrospectives_. These are offered merely as -intimations of a truth incomparably less difficult to recognize than to -define. - - L. H. - - TŌKYŌ, JAPAN, - _February 15, 1898_. - - - - -Contents - - - EXOTICS:-- PAGE - - I. FUJI-NO-YAMA 3 - II. INSECT-MUSICIANS 39 - III. A QUESTION IN THE ZEN TEXTS 83 - IV. THE LITERATURE OF THE DEAD 95 - V. FROGS 157 - VI. OF MOON-DESIRE 175 - - - RETROSPECTIVES:-- - - I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS 187 - II. BEAUTY IS MEMORY 199 - III. SADNESS IN BEAUTY 211 - IV. PARFUM DE JEUNESSE 221 - V. AZURE PSYCHOLOGY 227 - VI. A SERENADE 241 - VII. A RED SUNSET 251 - VIII. FRISSON 263 - IX. VESPERTINA COGNITIO 275 - X. THE ETERNAL HAUNTER 293 - - - - -List of Illustrations - - - _Full Page_ - PAGE - INSECT CAGES 51 - 1. A Form of Insect Cage. - 2. Cage for Large Musical Insects. - 3. Cage for Small Musical Insects. - GATE OF KOBUDERA 97 - TOMB IN KOBUDERA, showing Sotoba 102 - TOMB IN KOBUDERA, sculptured with image of Bodhisattva Mahâsthâma 137 - - _Illustrations in the Text_ - KANÉTATAKI (“The Bell-Ringer”), natural size 57 - MATSUMUSHI, slightly enlarged 60 - SUZUMUSHI, slightly enlarged 63 - UMAOI, natural size 67 - KIRIGIRISU, natural size 68 - KUSA-HIBARI, natural size 69 - YAMATO-SUZU (“Little-Bell of Yamato”), natural size 69 - KIN-HIBARI, natural size 70 - KURO-HIBARI, natural size 70 - EMMA-KŌROGI, natural size 71 - EMMA-KŌROGI 72 - KUTSUWAMUSHI, natural size 73 - KANTAN, natural size 75 - - - - -Exotics - -[Illustration] - ---“Even the worst tea is sweet when first made from the new -leaf.”--_Japanese proverb._ - - - - -Exotics and Retrospectives - -[Illustration] - -Fuji-no-Yama - - Kité miréba, - Sahodo madé nashi, - Fuji no Yama! - - Seen on close approach, the mountain of Fuji does not come up to - expectation.--_Japanese proverbial philosophy._ - - -The most beautiful sight in Japan, and certainly one of the most -beautiful in the world, is the distant apparition of Fuji on cloudless -days,--more especially days of spring and autumn, when the greater -part of the peak is covered with late or with early snows. You can -seldom distinguish the snowless base, which remains the same color as -the sky: you perceive only the white cone seeming to hang in heaven; -and the Japanese comparison of its shape to an inverted half-open fan -is made wonderfully exact by the fine streaks that spread downward -from the notched top, like shadows of fan-ribs. Even lighter than a -fan the vision appears,--rather the ghost or dream of a fan;--yet the -material reality a hundred miles away is grandiose among the mountains -of the globe. Rising to a height of nearly 12,500 feet, Fuji is visible -from thirteen provinces of the Empire. Nevertheless it is one of the -easiest of lofty mountains to climb; and for a thousand years it has -been scaled every summer by multitudes of pilgrims. For it is not only -a sacred mountain, but the most sacred mountain of Japan,--the holiest -eminence of the land that is called Divine,--the Supreme Altar of -the Sun;--and to ascend it at least once in a life-time is the duty -of all who reverence the ancient gods. So from every district of the -Empire pilgrims annually wend their way to Fuji; and in nearly all the -provinces there are pilgrim-societies--_Fuji-Kō_,--organized for the -purpose of aiding those desiring to visit the sacred peak. If this act -of faith cannot be performed by everybody in person, it can at least -be performed by proxy. Any hamlet, however remote, can occasionally -send one representative to pray before the shrine of the divinity of -Fuji, and to salute the rising sun from that sublime eminence. Thus a -single company of Fuji-pilgrims may be composed of men from a hundred -different settlements. - -By both of the national religions Fuji is held in reverence. The Shintō -deity of Fuji is the beautiful goddess Ko-no-hana-saku-ya-himé,--she -who brought forth her children in fire without pain, and whose name -signifies “Radiant-blooming-as-the-flowers-of-the-trees,” or, according -to some commentators, “Causing-the-flowers-to-blossom-brightly.” On the -summit is her temple; and in ancient books it is recorded that mortal -eyes have beheld her hovering, like a luminous cloud, above the verge -of the crater. Her viewless servants watch and wait by the precipices -to hurl down whomsoever presumes to approach her shrine with unpurified -heart.... Buddhism loves the grand peak because its form is like the -white bud of the Sacred Flower,--and because the eight cusps of its top, -like the eight petals of the Lotos, symbolize the Eight Intelligences of -Perception, Purpose, Speech, Conduct, Living, Effort, Mindfulness, and -Contemplation. - -But the legends and traditions about Fuji, the stories of its rising -out of the earth in a single night,--of the shower of pierced-jewels -once flung down from it,--of the first temple built upon its summit -eleven hundred years ago,--of the Luminous Maiden that lured to the -crater an Emperor who was never seen afterward, but is still worshipped -at a little shrine erected on the place of his vanishing,--of the sand -that daily rolled down by pilgrim feet nightly reascends to its former -position,--have not all these things been written in books? There -is really very little left for me to tell about Fuji except my own -experience of climbing it. - -I made the ascent by way of Gotemba,--the least picturesque, but -perhaps also the least difficult of the six or seven routes open to -choice. Gotemba is a little village chiefly consisting of pilgrim-inns. -You reach it from Tōkyō in about three hours by the Tōkaidō railway, -which rises for miles as it approaches the neighborhood of the mighty -volcano. Gotemba is considerably more than two thousand feet above the -sea, and therefore comparatively cool in the hottest season. The open -country about it slopes to Fuji; but the slope is so gradual that the -table-land seems almost level to the eye. From Gotemba in perfectly -clear weather the mountain looks uncomfortably near,--formidable by -proximity,--though actually miles away. During the rainy season it -may appear and disappear alternately many times in one day,--like an -enormous spectre. But on the grey August morning when I entered Gotemba -as a pilgrim, the landscape was muffled in vapors; and Fuji was totally -invisible. I arrived too late to attempt the ascent on the same day; -but I made my preparations at once for the day following, and engaged a -couple of _gōriki_ (“strong-pull men”), or experienced guides. I felt -quite secure on seeing their broad honest faces and sturdy bearing. They -supplied me with a pilgrim-staff, heavy blue _tabi_ (that is to say, -cleft-stockings, to be used with sandals), a straw hat shaped like Fuji, -and the rest of a pilgrim’s outfit;--telling me to be ready to start -with them at four o’clock in the morning. - -What is hereafter set down consists of notes taken on the journey, but -afterwards amended and expanded,--for notes made while climbing are -necessarily hurried and imperfect. - - - - -I - - - August 24th, 1897. - -From strings stretched above the balcony upon which my inn-room opens, -hundreds of towels are hung like flags,--blue towels and white, having -printed upon them in Chinese characters the names of pilgrim-companies -and of the divinity of Fuji. These are gifts to the house, and serve -as advertisements.... Raining from a uniformly grey sky. Fuji always -invisible. - - - August 25th. - -3:30 _a. m._--No sleep;--tumult all night of parties returning late -from the mountain, or arriving for the pilgrimage;--constant clapping -of hands to summon servants;--banqueting and singing in the adjoining -chambers, with alarming bursts of laughter every few minutes.... -Breakfast of soup, fish, and rice. Gōriki arrive in professional -costume, and find me ready. Nevertheless they insist that I shall -undress again and put on heavy underclothing;--warning me that even -when it is Doyō (the period of greatest summer heat) at the foot of the -mountain, it is Daikan (the period of greatest winter cold) at the top. -Then they start in advance, carrying provisions and bundles of heavy -clothing.... A kuruma waits for me, with three runners,--two to pull, -and one to push, as the work will be hard uphill. By kuruma I can go to -the height of five thousand feet. - - * * * * * - -Morning black and slightly chill, with fine rain; but I shall soon be -above the rain-clouds.... The lights of the town vanish behind us;--the -kuruma is rolling along a country-road. Outside of the swinging penumbra -made by the paper-lantern of the foremost runner, nothing is clearly -visible; but I can vaguely distinguish silhouettes of trees and, from -time to time, of houses,--peasants’ houses with steep roofs. - - * * * * * - -Grey wan light slowly suffuses the moist air;--day is dawning through -drizzle.... Gradually the landscape defines with its colors. The way -lies through thin woods. Occasionally we pass houses with high thatched -roofs that look like farmhouses; but cultivated land is nowhere -visible.... - - * * * * * - -Open country with scattered clumps of trees,--larch and pine. Nothing in -the horizon but scraggy tree-tops above what seems to be the rim of a -vast down. No sign whatever of Fuji.... For the first time I notice that -the road is black,--black sand and cinders apparently, volcanic cinders: -the wheels of the kuruma and the feet of the runners sink into it with a -crunching sound. - - * * * * * - -The rain has stopped, and the sky becomes a clearer grey.... The trees -decrease in size and number as we advance. - - * * * * * - -What I have been taking for the horizon, in front of us, suddenly -breaks open, and begins to roll smokily away to left and right. In -the great rift part of a dark-blue mass appears,--a portion of Fuji. -Almost at the same moment the sun pierces the clouds behind us; but the -road now enters a copse covering the base of a low ridge, and the view -is cut off.... Halt at a little house among the trees,--a pilgrims’ -resting-place,--and there find the gōriki, who have advanced much more -rapidly than my runners, waiting for us. Buy eggs, which a gōriki rolls -up in a narrow strip of straw matting;--tying the matting tightly with -straw cord between the eggs,--so that the string of eggs has somewhat -the appearance of a string of sausages.... Hire a horse. - - * * * * * - -Sky clears as we proceed;--white sunlight floods everything. Road -reascends; and we emerge again on the moorland. And, right in front, -Fuji appears,--naked to the summit,--stupendous,--startling as if -newly risen from the earth. Nothing could be more beautiful. A vast -blue cone,--warm-blue, almost violet through the vapors not yet lifted -by the sun,--with two white streaklets near the top which are great -gullies full of snow, though they look from here scarcely an inch -long. But the charm of the apparition is much less the charm of color -than of symmetry,--a symmetry of beautiful bending lines with a curve -like the curve of a cable stretched over a space too wide to allow of -pulling taut. (This comparison did not at once suggest itself: The -first impression given me by the grace of those lines was an impression -of femininity;--I found myself thinking of some exquisite sloping of -shoulders towards the neck.) I can imagine nothing more difficult to -draw at sight. But the Japanese artist, through his marvellous skill -with the writing-brush,--the skill inherited from generations of -calligraphists,--easily faces the riddle: he outlines the silhouette -with two flowing strokes made in the fraction of a second, and manages -to hit the exact truth of the curves,--much as a professional archer -might hit a mark, without consciously taking aim, through long exact -habit of hand and eye. - - - - -II - - -I see the gōriki hurrying forward far away,--one of them carrying the -eggs round his neck!... Now there are no more trees worthy of the -name,--only scattered stunted growths resembling shrubs. The black -road curves across a vast grassy down; and here and there I see large -black patches in the green surface,--bare spaces of ashes and scoriæ; -showing that this thin green skin covers some enormous volcanic deposit -of recent date.... As a matter of history, all this district was buried -two yards deep in 1707 by an eruption from the side of Fuji. Even in -far-off Tōkyō the rain of ashes covered roofs to a depth of sixteen -centimetres. There are no farms in this region, because there is little -true soil; and there is no water. But volcanic destruction is not -eternal destruction; eruptions at last prove fertilizing; and the divine -“Princess-who-causes-the-flowers-to-blossom-brightly” will make this -waste to smile again in future hundreds of years. - - * * * * * - -... The black openings in the green surface become more numerous and -larger. A few dwarf-shrubs still mingle with the coarse grass.... The -vapors are lifting; and Fuji is changing color. It is no longer a -glowing blue, but a dead sombre blue. Irregularities previously hidden -by rising ground appear in the lower part of the grand curves. One of -these to the left,--shaped like a camel’s hump,--represents the focus of -the last great eruption. - - * * * * * - -The land is not now green with black patches, but black with green -patches; and the green patches dwindle visibly in the direction of the -peak. The shrubby growths have disappeared. The wheels of the kuruma, -and the feet of the runners sink deeper into the volcanic sand.... The -horse is now attached to the kuruma with ropes, and I am able to advance -more rapidly. Still the mountain seems far away; but we are really -running up its flank at a height of more than five thousand feet. - - * * * * * - -Fuji has ceased to be blue of any shade. It is -black,--charcoal-black,--a frightful extinct heap of visible ashes and -cinders and slaggy lava.... Most of the green has disappeared. Likewise -all of the illusion. The tremendous naked black reality,--always -becoming more sharply, more grimly, more atrociously defined,--is a -stupefaction, a nightmare.... Above--miles above--the snow patches glare -and gleam against that blackness,--hideously. I think of a gleam of -white teeth I once saw in a skull,--a woman’s skull,--otherwise burnt to -a sooty crisp. - - * * * * * - -So one of the fairest, if not the fairest of earthly visions, resolves -itself into a spectacle of horror and death.... But have not all human -ideals of beauty, like the beauty of Fuji seen from afar, been created -by forces of death and pain?--are not all, in their kind, but composites -of death, beheld in retrospective through the magical haze of inherited -memory? - - - - -III - - -The green has utterly vanished;--all is black. There is no road,--only -the broad waste of black sand sloping and narrowing up to those -dazzling, grinning patches of snow. But there is a track,--a yellowish -track made by thousands and thousands of cast-off sandals of straw -(_waraji_), flung aside by pilgrims. Straw sandals quickly wear out upon -this black grit; and every pilgrim carries several pair for the journey. -Had I to make the ascent alone, I could find the path by following that -wake of broken sandals,--a yellow streak zigzagging up out of sight -across the blackness. - - * * * * * - -6:40 _a. m._--We reach Tarōbō, first of the ten stations on the -ascent: height, 6000 feet. The station is a large wooden house, of -which two rooms have been fitted up as a shop for the sale of staves, -hats, raincoats, sandals,--everything pilgrims need. I find there a -peripatetic photographer offering for sale photographs of the mountain -which are really very good as well as very cheap.... Here the gōriki -take their first meal; and I rest. The kuruma can go no further; and I -dismiss my three runners, but keep the horse,--a docile and surefooted -creature; for I can venture to ride him up to _Ni-gō-goséki_, or Station -No. 2-1/2. - - * * * * * - -Start for No. 2-1/2 up the slant of black sand, keeping the horse at a -walk. No. 2-1/2 is shut up for the season.... Slope now becomes steep as -a stairway, and further riding would be dangerous. Alight and make ready -for the climb. Cold wind blowing so strongly that I have to tie on my -hat tightly. One of the gōriki unwinds from about his waist a long stout -cotton girdle, and giving me one end to hold, passes the other over -his shoulder for the pull. Then he proceeds over the sand at an angle, -with a steady short step, and I follow; the other guide keeping closely -behind me to provide against any slip. - - * * * * * - -There is nothing very difficult about this climbing, except the -weariness of walking through sand and cinders: it is like walking over -dunes.... We mount by zigzags. The sand moves with the wind; and I have -a slightly nervous sense--the feeling only, not the perception; for I -keep my eyes on the sand,--of height growing above depth.... Have to -watch my steps carefully, and to use my staff constantly, as the slant -is now very steep.... We are in a white fog,--passing through clouds! -Even if I wished to look back, I could see nothing through this vapor; -but I have not the least wish to look back. The wind has suddenly -ceased--cut off, perhaps, by a ridge; and there is a silence that I -remember from West Indian days: the Peace of High Places. It is broken -only by the crunching of the ashes beneath our feet. I can distinctly -hear my heart beat.... The guide tells me that I stoop too much,--orders -me to walk upright, and always in stepping to put down the heel first. -I do this, and find it relieving. But climbing through this tiresome -mixture of ashes and sand begins to be trying. I am perspiring and -panting. The guide bids me keep my honorable mouth closed, and breathe -only through my honorable nose. - - * * * * * - -We are out of the fog again.... All at once I perceive above us, at -a little distance, something like a square hole in the face of the -mountain,--a door! It is the door of the third station,--a wooden hut -half-buried in black drift.... How delightful to squat again,--even in -a blue cloud of wood-smoke and under smoke-blackened rafters! Time, 8:30 -a. m. Height, 7,085 feet. - - * * * * * - -In spite of the wood-smoke the station is comfortable enough inside; -there are clean mattings and even kneeling-cushions. No windows, -of course, nor any other opening than the door; for the building -is half-buried in the flank of the mountain. We lunch.... The -station-keeper tells us that recently a student walked from Gotemba to -the top of the mountain and back again--in geta! Geta are heavy wooden -sandals, or clogs, held to the foot only by a thong passing between the -great and the second toe. The feet of that student must have been made -of steel! - -Having rested, I go out to look around. Far below white clouds are -rolling over the landscape in huge fluffy wreaths. Above the hut, and -actually trickling down over it, the sable cone soars to the sky. But -the amazing sight is the line of the monstrous slope to the left,--a -line that now shows no curve whatever, but shoots down below the -clouds, and up to the gods only know where (for I cannot see the end -of it), straight as a tightened bowstring. The right flank is rocky -and broken. But as for the left,--I never dreamed it possible that a -line so absolutely straight and smooth, and extending for so enormous a -distance at such an amazing angle, could exist even in a volcano. That -stupendous pitch gives me a sense of dizziness, and a totally unfamiliar -feeling of wonder. Such regularity appears unnatural, frightful; seems -even artificial,--but artificial upon a superhuman and demoniac scale. -I imagine that to fall thence from above would be to fall for leagues. -Absolutely nothing to take hold of. But the gōriki assure me that there -is no danger on that slope: it is all soft sand. - - - - -IV - - -Though drenched with perspiration by the exertion of the first climb, I -am already dry, and cold.... Up again.... The ascent is at first through -ashes and sand as before; but presently large stones begin to mingle -with the sand; and the way is always growing steeper.... I constantly -slip. There is nothing firm, nothing resisting to stand upon: loose -stones and cinders roll down at every step.... If a big lava-block were -to detach itself from above!... In spite of my helpers and of the staff, -I continually slip, and am all in perspiration again. Almost every stone -that I tread upon turns under me. How is it that no stone ever turns -under the feet of the gōriki? _They_ never slip,--never make a false -step,--never seem less at ease than they would be in walking over a -matted floor. Their small brown broad feet always poise upon the shingle -at exactly the right angle. They are heavier men than I; but they move -lightly as birds.... Now I have to stop for rest every half-a-dozen -steps.... The line of broken straw sandals follows the zigzags we -take.... At last--at last another door in the face of the mountain. -Enter the fourth station, and fling myself down upon the mats. Time, -10:30 a. m. Height, only 7,937 feet;--yet it seemed such a distance! - - * * * * * - -Off again.... Way worse and worse.... Feel a new distress due to the -rarefaction of the air. Heart beating as in a high fever.... Slope -has become very rough. It is no longer soft ashes and sand mixed -with stones, but stones only,--fragments of lava, lumps of pumice, -scoriæ of every sort, all angled as if freshly broken with a hammer. -All would likewise seem to have been expressly shaped so as to turn -upside-down when trodden upon. Yet I must confess that they never -turn under the feet of the gōriki.... The cast-off sandals strew the -slope in ever-increasing numbers.... But for the gōriki I should have -had ever so many bad tumbles: they cannot prevent me from slipping; -but they never allow me to fall. Evidently I am not fitted to climb -mountains.... Height, 8,659 feet--but the fifth station is shut up! Must -keep zigzaging on to the next. Wonder how I shall ever be able to reach -it!... And there are people still alive who have climbed Fuji three and -four times, _for pleasure_!... Dare not look back. See nothing but the -black stones always turning under me, and the bronzed feet of those -marvellous gōriki who never slip, never pant, and never perspire.... -Staff begins to hurt my hand.... Gōriki push and pull: it is shameful of -me, I know, to give them so much trouble.... Ah! sixth station!--may all -the myriads of the gods bless my gōriki! Time, 2:07 p. m. Height, 9,317 -feet. - - * * * * * - -Resting, I gaze through the doorway at the abyss below. The land is now -dimly visible only through rents in a prodigious wilderness of white -clouds; and within these rents everything looks almost black.... The -horizon has risen frightfully,--has expanded monstrously.... My gōriki -warn me that the summit is still miles away. I have been too slow. We -must hasten upward. - - * * * * * - -Certainly the zigzag is steeper than before.... With the stones now -mingle angular rocks; and we sometimes have to flank queer black bulks -that look like basalt.... On the right rises, out of sight, a jagged -black hideous ridge,--an ancient lava-stream. The line of the left slope -still shoots up, straight as a bow-string.... Wonder if the way will -become any steeper;--doubt whether it can possibly become any rougher. -Rocks dislodged by my feet roll down soundlessly;--I am afraid to look -after them. Their noiseless vanishing gives me a sensation like the -sensation of falling in dreams.... - - * * * * * - -There is a white gleam overhead--the lowermost verge of an immense -stretch of snow.... Now we are skirting a snow-filled gully,--the -lowermost of those white patches which, at first sight of the summit -this morning, seemed scarcely an inch long. It will take an hour to pass -it.... A guide runs forward, while I rest upon my staff, and returns -with a large ball of snow. What curious snow! Not flaky, soft, white -snow, but a mass of transparent globules,--exactly like glass beads. I -eat some, and find it deliciously refreshing.... The seventh station is -closed. How shall I get to the eighth?... Happily, breathing has become -less difficult.... The wind is upon us again, and black dust with it. -The gōriki keep close to me, and advance with caution.... I have to stop -for rest at every turn on the path;--cannot talk for weariness.... I do -not feel;--I am much too tired to feel.... How I managed it, I do not -know;--but I have actually got to the eighth station! Not for a thousand -millions of dollars will I go one step further to-day. Time, 4:40 p. m. -Height, 10,693 feet. - - - - -V - - -It is much too cold here for rest without winter clothing; and now I -learn the worth of the heavy robes provided by the guides. The robes -are blue, with big white Chinese characters on the back, and are padded -thickly as bedquilts; but they feel light; for the air is really like -the frosty breath of February.... A meal is preparing;--I notice that -charcoal at this elevation acts in a refractory manner, and that a -fire can be maintained only by constant attention.... Cold and fatigue -sharpen appetite: we consume a surprising quantity of _Zō-sui_,--rice -boiled with eggs and a little meat. By reason of my fatigue and of the -hour, it has been decided to remain here for the night. - - * * * * * - -Tired as I am, I cannot but limp to the doorway to contemplate the -amazing prospect. From within a few feet of the threshold, the ghastly -slope of rocks and cinders drops down into a prodigious disk of clouds -miles beneath us,--clouds of countless forms, but mostly wreathings -and fluffy pilings;--and the whole huddling mass, reaching almost -to the horizon, is blinding white under the sun. (By the Japanese, -this tremendous cloud-expanse is well named _Wata-no-Umi_, “the Sea -of Cotton.”) The horizon itself--enormously risen, phantasmally -expanded--seems halfway up above the world: a wide luminous belt ringing -the hollow vision. Hollow, I call it, because extreme distances below -the sky-line are sky-colored and vague,--so that the impression you -receive is not of being on a point under a vault, but of being upon a -point rising into a stupendous blue sphere, of which this huge horizon -would represent the equatorial zone. To turn away from such a spectacle -is not possible. I watch and watch until the dropping sun changes the -colors,--turning the Sea of Cotton into a Fleece of Gold. Half-round -the horizon a yellow glory grows and burns. Here and there beneath it, -through cloudrifts, colored vaguenesses define: I now see golden water, -with long purple headlands reaching into it, with ranges of violet peaks -thronging behind it;--these glimpses curiously resembling portions of a -tinted topographical map. Yet most of the landscape is pure delusion. -Even my guides, with their long experience and their eagle-sight, can -scarcely distinguish the real from the unreal;--for the blue and -purple and violet clouds moving under the Golden Fleece, exactly mock -the outlines and the tones of distant peaks and capes: you can detect -what is vapor only by its slowly shifting shape.... Brighter and -brighter glows the gold. Shadows come from the west,--shadows flung by -cloud-pile over cloud-pile; and these, like evening shadows upon snow, -are violaceous blue.... Then orange-tones appear in the horizon; then -smouldering crimson. And now the greater part of the Fleece of Gold has -changed to cotton again,--white cotton mixed with pink.... Stars thrill -out. The cloud-waste uniformly whitens;--thickening and packing to the -horizon. The west glooms. Night rises; and all things darken except that -wondrous unbroken world-round of white,--the Sea of Cotton. - - * * * * * - -The station-keeper lights his lamps, kindles a fire of twigs, prepares -our beds. Outside it is bitterly cold, and, with the fall of night, -becoming colder. Still I cannot turn away from that astounding -vision.... Countless stars now flicker and shiver in the blue-black sky. -Nothing whatever of the material world remains visible, except the -black slope of the peak before my feet. The enormous cloud-disk below -continues white; but to all appearance it has become a liquidly level -white, without forms,--a white flood. It is no longer the Sea of Cotton. -It is a Sea of Milk, the Cosmic Sea of ancient Indian legend,--and -always self-luminous, as with ghostly quickenings. - - - - -VI - - -Squatting by the wood fire, I listen to the gōriki and the -station-keeper telling of strange happenings on the mountain. One -incident discussed I remember reading something about in a Tōkyō paper: -I now hear it retold by the lips of a man who figured in it as a hero. - -A Japanese meteorologist named Nonaka, attempted last year the rash -undertaking of passing the winter on the summit of Fuji for purposes -of scientific study. It might not be difficult to winter upon the peak -in a solid observatory furnished with a good stove, and all necessary -comforts; but Nonaka could afford only a small wooden hut, in which he -would be obliged to spend the cold season _without fire_! His young wife -insisted on sharing his labors and dangers. The couple began their -sojourn on the summit toward the close of September. In midwinter news -was brought to Gotemba that both were dying. - -Relatives and friends tried to organize a rescue-party. But the -weather was frightful; the peak was covered with snow and ice; the -chances of death were innumerable; and the gōriki would not risk their -lives. Hundreds of dollars could not tempt them. At last a desperate -appeal was made to them as representatives of Japanese courage and -hardihood: they were assured that to suffer a man of science to perish, -without making even one plucky effort to save him, would disgrace the -country;--they were told that the national honor was in their hands. -This appeal brought forward two volunteers. One was a man of great -strength and daring, nick-named by his fellow-guides, _Oni-guma_, -“the Demon-Bear,” the other was the elder of my gōriki. Both believed -that they were going to certain destruction. They took leave of their -friends and kindred, and drank with their families the farewell cup of -water,--_midzu-no-sakazuki_,--in which those about to be separated by -death pledge each other. Then, after having thickly wrapped themselves -in cotton-wool, and made all possible preparation for ice climbing, they -started,--taking with them a brave army-surgeon who had offered his -services, without fee, for the rescue. After surmounting extraordinary -difficulties, the party reached the hut; but the inmates refused to -open! Nonaka protested that he would rather die than face the shame of -failure in his undertaking; and his wife said that she had resolved -to die with her husband. Partly by forcible, and partly by gentle -means, the pair were restored to a better state of mind. The surgeon -administered medicines and cordials; the patients, carefully wrapped up, -were strapped to the backs of the guides; and the descent was begun. -My gōriki, who carried the lady, believes that the gods helped him on -the ice-slopes. More than once, all thought themselves lost; but they -reached the foot of the mountain without one serious mishap. After weeks -of careful nursing, the rash young couple were pronounced out of danger. -The wife suffered less, and recovered more quickly, than the husband. - - * * * * * - -The gōriki have cautioned me not to venture outside during the night -without calling them. They will not tell me why; and their warning is -peculiarly uncanny. From previous experiences during Japanese travel, -I surmise that the danger implied is supernatural; but I feel that it -would be useless to ask questions. - -The door is closed and barred. I lie down between the guides, who are -asleep in a moment, as I can tell by their heavy breathing. I cannot -sleep immediately;--perhaps the fatigues and the surprises of the -day have made me somewhat nervous. I look up at the rafters of the -black roof,--at packages of sandals, bundles of wood, bundles of many -indistinguishable kinds there stowed away or suspended, and making queer -shadows in the lamplight.... It is terribly cold, even under my three -quilts; and the sound of the wind outside is wonderfully like the sound -of great surf,--a constant succession of bursting roars, each followed -by a prolonged hiss. The hut, half buried under tons of rock and drift, -does not move; but the sand does, and trickles down between the rafters; -and small stones also move after each fierce gust, with a rattling just -like the clatter of shingle in the pull of a retreating wave. - - * * * * * - -4. _a. m._--Go out alone, despite last evening’s warning, but keep -close to the door. There is a great and icy blowing. The Sea of Milk is -unchanged: it lies far below this wind. Over it the moon is dying.... -The guides, perceiving my absence, spring up and join me. I am reproved -for not having awakened them. They will not let me stay outside alone: -so I turn in with them. - - * * * * * - -Dawn: a zone of pearl grows round the world. The stars vanish; the sky -brightens. A wild sky, with dark wrack drifting at an enormous height. -The Sea of Milk has turned again into Cotton,--and there are wide -rents in it. The desolation of the black slope,--all the ugliness of -slaggy rock and angled stone, again defines.... Now the cotton becomes -disturbed;--it is breaking up. A yellow glow runs along the east like -the glare of a wind-blown fire.... Alas! I shall not be among the -fortunate mortals able to boast of viewing from Fuji the first lifting -of the sun! Heavy clouds have drifted across the horizon at the point -where he should rise.... Now I know that he has risen; because the upper -edges of those purple rags of cloud are burning like charcoal. But I -have been so disappointed! - - * * * * * - -More and more luminous the hollow world. League-wide heapings of cottony -cloud roll apart. Fearfully far-away there is a light of gold upon -water: the sun here remains viewless, but the ocean sees him. It is -not a flicker, but a burnished glow;--at such a distance ripplings are -invisible.... Further and further scattering, the clouds unveil a vast -grey and blue landscape;--hundreds and hundreds of miles throng into -vision at once. On the right I distinguish Tōkyō bay, and Kamakura, -and the holy island of Enoshima (no bigger than the dot over this -letter “i”);--on the left the wilder Suruga coast, and the blue-toothed -promontory of Idzu, and the place of the fishing-village where I have -been summering,--the merest pin-point in that tinted dream of hill and -shore. Rivers appear but as sun-gleams on spider-threads;--fishing-sails -are white dust clinging to the grey-blue glass of the sea. And the -picture alternately appears and vanishes while the clouds drift and -shift across it, and shape themselves into spectral islands and -mountains and valleys of all Elysian colors.... - - -VII - -6:40 _a. m._--Start for the top.... Hardest and roughest stage of -the journey, through a wilderness of lava-blocks. The path zigzags -between ugly masses that project from the slope like black teeth. The -trail of cast-away sandals is wider than ever.... Have to rest every -few minutes.... Reach another long patch of the snow that looks like -glass-beads, and eat some. The next station--a half-station--is closed; -and the ninth has ceased to exist.... A sudden fear comes to me, not of -the ascent, but of the prospective descent by a route which is too steep -even to permit of comfortably sitting down. But the guides assure me -that there will be no difficulty, and that most of the return-journey -will be by another way,--over the interminable level which I wondered at -yesterday,--nearly all soft sand, with very few stones. It is called the -_hashiri_ (“glissade”); and we are to descend at a run!... - -All at once a family of field-mice scatter out from under my feet in -panic; and the gōriki behind me catches one, and gives it to me. I hold -the tiny shivering life for a moment to examine it, and set it free -again. These little creatures have very long pale noses. How do they -live in this waterless desolation,--and at such an altitude,--especially -in the season of snow? For we are now at a height of more than eleven -thousand feet! The gōriki say that the mice find roots growing under the -stones.... - - * * * * * - -Wilder and steeper;--for me, at least, the climbing is sometimes on -all fours. There are barriers which we surmount with the help of -ladders. There are fearful places with Buddhist names, such as the -_Sai-no-Kawara_, or Dry Bed of the River of Souls,--a black waste strewn -with heaps of rock, like those stone-piles which, in Buddhist pictures -of the underworld, the ghosts of children build.... - - * * * * * - -Twelve thousand feet, and something,--the top! Time, 8:20 a. m.... -Stone huts; Shintō shrine with tōrii; icy well, called the Spring of -Gold; stone tablet bearing a Chinese poem and the design of a tiger; -rough walls of lava-blocks round these things,--possibly for protection -against the wind. Then the huge dead crater,--probably between a -quarter of a mile and half-a-mile wide, but shallowed up to within -three or four hundred feet of the verge by volcanic detritus,--a cavity -horrible even in the tones of its yellow crumbling walls, streaked -and stained with every hue of scorching. I perceive that the trail of -straw sandals ends _in_ the crater. Some hideous over-hanging cusps -of black lava--like the broken edges of a monstrous cicatrix--project -on two sides several hundred feet above the opening; but I certainly -shall not take the trouble to climb them. Yet these,--seen through -the haze of a hundred miles,--through the soft illusion of blue -spring-weather,--appear as the opening snowy petals of the bud of the -Sacred Lotos!... No spot in this world can be more horrible, more -atrociously dismal, than the cindered tip of the Lotos as you stand upon -it. - -But the view--the view for a hundred leagues,--and the light of the -far faint dreamy world,--and the fairy vapors of morning,--and the -marvellous wreathings of cloud: all this, and only this, consoles me for -the labor and the pain.... Other pilgrims, earlier climbers,--poised -upon the highest crag, with faces turned to the tremendous East,--are -clapping their hands in Shintō prayer, saluting the mighty Day.... -The immense poetry of the moment enters into me with a thrill. I -know that the colossal vision before me has already become a memory -ineffaceable,--a memory of which no luminous detail can fade till the -hour when thought itself must fade, and the dust of these eyes be -mingled with the dust of the myriad million eyes that also have looked, -in ages forgotten before my birth, from the summit supreme of Fuji to -the Rising of the Sun. - - - - -Insect-Musicians - -[Illustration] - - Mushi yo mushi, - Naïté ingwa ga - Tsukuru nara? - - “O insect, insect!--think you that Karma can be exhausted by - song?”--_Japanese poem._ - - -I - -If you ever visit Japan, be sure to go to at least one -temple-festival,--_en-nichi_. The festival ought to be seen at night, -when everything shows to the best advantage in the glow of countless -lamps and lanterns. Until you have had this experience, you cannot know -what Japan is,--you cannot imagine the real charm of queerness and -prettiness, the wonderful blending of grotesquery and beauty, to be -found in the life of the common people. - -In such a night you will probably let yourself drift awhile with -the stream of sight-seers through dazzling lanes of booths full -of toys indescribable--dainty puerilities, fragile astonishments, -laughter-making oddities;--you will observe representations of -demons, gods, and goblins;--you will be startled by _mandō_--immense -lantern-transparencies, with monstrous faces painted upon them;-- -you will have glimpses of jugglers, acrobats, sword-dancers, -fortune-tellers;--you will hear everywhere, above the tumult of voices, -a ceaseless blowing of flutes and booming of drums. All this may not be -worth stopping for. But presently, I am almost sure, you will pause in -your promenade to look at a booth illuminated like a magic-lantern, and -stocked with tiny wooden cages out of which an incomparable shrilling -proceeds. The booth is the booth of a vendor of singing-insects; and -the storm of noise is made by the insects. The sight is curious; and a -foreigner is nearly always attracted by it. - -But having satisfied his momentary curiosity, the foreigner usually -goes on his way with the idea that he has been inspecting nothing -more remarkable than a particular variety of toys for children. He -might easily be made to understand that the insect-trade of Tōkyō -alone represents a yearly value of thousands of dollars; but he would -certainly wonder if assured that the insects themselves are esteemed -for the peculiar character of the sounds which they make. It would not -be easy to convince him that in the æsthetic life of a most refined -and artistic people, these insects hold a place not less important -or well-deserved than that occupied in Western civilization by our -thrushes, linnets, nightingales and canaries. What stranger could -suppose that a literature one thousand years old,--a literature full -of curious and delicate beauty,--exists upon the subject of these -short-lived insect-pets? - - * * * * * - -The object of the present paper is, by elucidating these facts, to -show how superficially our travellers might unconsciously judge the -most interesting details of Japanese life. But such misjudgments are -as natural as they are inevitable. Even with the kindest of intentions -it is impossible to estimate correctly at sight anything of the -extraordinary in Japanese custom,--because the extraordinary nearly -always relates to feelings, beliefs, or thoughts about which a stranger -cannot know anything. - - * * * * * - -Before proceeding further, let me observe that the domestic insects of -which I am going to speak, are mostly night-singers, and must not be -confounded with the _semi_ (cicadæ), mentioned in former essays of mine. -I think that the cicadæ,--even in a country so exceptionally rich as is -Japan in musical insects,--are wonderful melodists in their own way. But -the Japanese find as much difference between the notes of night-insects -and of cicadæ as we find between those of larks and sparrows; and they -relegate their cicadæ to the vulgar place of chatterers. _Semi_ are -therefore never caged. The national liking for caged insects does not -mean a liking for mere noise; and the note of every insect in public -favor must possess either some rhythmic charm, or some mimetic quality -celebrated in poetry or legend. The same fact is true of the Japanese -liking for the chant of frogs. It would be a mistake to suppose that all -kinds of frogs are considered musical; but there are particular species -of very small frogs having sweet notes; and these are caged and petted. - -Of course, in the proper meaning of the word, insects do not _sing_; -but in the following pages I may occasionally employ the terms “singer” -and “singing-insect,”--partly because of their convenience, and partly -because of their correspondence with the language used by Japanese -insect-dealers and poets, describing the “voices” of such creatures. - - -II - -There are many curious references in the old Japanese classic literature -to the custom of keeping musical insects. For example in the chapter -entitled _Nowaki_[1] of the famous novel “Genji Monogatari,” written -in the latter part of the tenth century by the Lady Murasaki-Shikibu, -it is stated: “The maids were ordered to descend to the garden, and -give some water to the insects.” But the first definite mention of -cages for singing-insects would appear to be the following passage -from a work entitled _Chomon-Shū_:--“On the twelfth day of the eighth -month of the second year of Kaho [1095 A. D.], the Emperor ordered -his pages and chamberlains to go to Sagano and find some insects. The -Emperor gave them a cage of network of bright purple thread. All, -even the head-chaplain and his attendants, taking horses from the -Right and the Left Imperial Mews, then went on horseback to hunt for -insects. Tokinori Ben, at that time holding the office of _Kurando_,[2] -proposed to the party as they rode toward Sagano, a subject for poetical -composition. The subject was, _Looking for insects in the fields_. On -reaching Sagano, the party dismounted, and walked in various directions -for a distance of something more than ten _chō_,[3] and sent their -attendants to catch the insects. In the evening they returned to the -palace. They put into the cage some _hagi_[4] and _ominameshi_ [for the -insects]. The cage was respectfully presented to the Empress. There -was _saké_-drinking in the palace that evening; and many poems were -composed. The Empress and her court-ladies joined in the making of the -poems.” - - * * * * * - -This would appear to be the oldest Japanese record of an -insect-hunt,--though the amusement may have been invented earlier than -the period of Kaho. By the seventeenth century it seems to have become a -popular diversion; and night-hunts were in vogue as much as day-hunts. -In the _Teikoku Bunshū_, or collected works of the poet Teikoku, who -died during the second year of Shōwō (1653), there has been preserved -one of the poet’s letters which contains a very interesting passage on -the subject. “Let us go insect-hunting this evening,”--writes the poet -to his friend. “It is true that the night will be very dark, since there -is no moon; and it may seem dangerous to go out. But there are many -people now going to the graveyards every night, because the Bon festival -is approaching[5];--therefore the way to the fields will not be lonesome -for us. I have prepared many lanterns;--so the _hata-ori_, _matsumushi_, -and other insects will probably come to the lanterns in great number.” - - * * * * * - -It would also seem that the trade of insect-seller (_mushiya_) existed -in the seventeenth century; for in a diary of that time, known as the -Diary of Kikaku, the writer speaks of his disappointment at not finding -any insect-dealers in Yedo,--tolerably good evidence that he had met -such persons elsewhere. “On the thirteenth day of the sixth month of -the fourth year of Teikyo [1687], I went out,” he writes, “to look for -_kirigirisu_-sellers. I searched for them in Yotsuya, in Kōjimachi, in -Hongō, in Yushimasa, and in both divisions of Kanda-Sudamachō[6]; but I -found none.” - -As we shall presently see, the _kirigirisu_ was not sold in Tōkyō until -about one hundred and twenty years later. - - * * * * * - -But long before it became the fashion to keep singing-insects, their -music had been celebrated by poets as one of the æsthetic pleasures of -the autumn. There are charming references to singing-insects in poetical -collections made during the tenth century, and doubtless containing -many compositions of a yet earlier period. And just as places famous -for cherry, plum, or other blossoming trees, are still regularly -visited every year by thousands and tens of thousands, merely for the -delight of seeing the flowers in their seasons,--so in ancient times -city-dwellers made autumn excursions to country-districts simply for -the pleasure of hearing the chirruping choruses of crickets and of -locusts,--the night-singers especially. Centuries ago places were noted -as pleasure-resorts solely because of this melodious attraction;--such -were Musashino (now Tōkyō), Yatano in the province of Echizen, and Mano -in the province of Ōmi. Somewhat later, probably, people discovered that -each of the principal species of singing-insects haunted by preference -some particular locality, where its peculiar chanting could be heard to -the best advantage; and eventually no less than eleven places became -famous throughout Japan for different kinds of insect-music. - -The best places to hear the _matsumushi_ were:-- - - (1) Arashiyama, near Kyōto, in the province of Yamashiro; - (2) Sumiyoshi, in the province of Settsu; - (3) Miyagino, in the province of Mutsu. - -The best places to hear the _suzumushi_ were:-- - - (4) Kagura-ga-Oka, in Yamashiro; - (5) Ogura-yama, in Yamashiro; - (6) Suzuka-yama, in Isé; - (7) Narumi, in Owari. - -The best places to hear the _kirigirisu_ were:-- - - (8) Sagano, in Yamashiro; - (9) Takeda-no-Sato, in Yamashiro; - (10) Tatsuta-yama, in Yamato; - (11) Ono-no-Shinowara, in Ōmi. - - * * * * * - -Afterwards, when the breeding and sale of singing-insects became a -lucrative industry, the custom of going into the country to hear them -gradually went out of fashion. But even to-day city-dwellers, when -giving a party, will sometimes place cages of singing-insects among the -garden-shrubbery, so that the guests may enjoy not only the music of the -little creatures, but also those memories or sensations of rural peace -which such music evokes. - - -III - -The regular trade in musical insects is of comparatively modern -origin. In Tōkyō its beginnings date back only to the Kwansei era -(1789-1800),--at which period, however, the capital of the Shōgunate -was still called Yedo. A complete history of the business was recently -placed in my hands,--a history partly compiled from old documents, -and partly from traditions preserved in the families of several noted -insect-merchants of the present day. - - * * * * * - -The founder of the Tōkyō trade was an itinerant foodseller named Chūzō, -originally from Echigo, who settled in the Kanda district of the city -in the latter part of the eighteenth century. One day, while making his -usual rounds, it occurred to him to capture a few of the _suzumushi_, -or bell-insects, then very plentiful in the Negishi quarter, and to -try the experiment of feeding them at home. They throve and made -music in confinement; and several of Chūzō’s neighbors, charmed by -their melodious chirruping, asked to be supplied with _suzumushi_ -for a consideration. From this accidental beginning, the demand for -_suzumushi_ grew rapidly to such proportions that the foodseller at last -decided to give up his former calling and to become an insect-seller. - -Chūzō only caught and sold insects: he never imagined that it would be -more profitable to breed them. But the fact was presently discovered -by one of his customers,--a man named Kirayama, then in the service -of the Lord Aoyama Shimodzuké-no-Kami. Kiriyama had bought from Chūzō -several _suzumushi_, which were kept and fed in a jar half-filled with -moist clay. They died in the cold season; but during the following -summer Kiriyama was agreeably surprised to find the jar newly peopled -with a number of young ones, evidently born from eggs which the first -prisoners had left in the clay. He fed them carefully, and soon had the -pleasure, my chronicler says, of hearing them “begin to sing in small -voices.” Then he resolved to make some experiments; and, aided by Chūzō, -who furnished the males and females, he succeeded in breeding not only -_suzumushi_, but three other kinds of singing-insects also,--_kantan_, -_matsumushi_, and _kutsuwamushi_. He discovered, at the same time, -that, by keeping his jars in a warm room, the insects could be hatched -considerably in advance of the natural season. Chūzō sold for Kiriyama -these home-bred singers; and both men found the new undertaking -profitable beyond expectation. - -The example set by Kiriyama was imitated by a _tabiya_, or -stocking-maker named Yasubei (commonly known as Tabiya Yasubei by -reason of his calling), who lived in Kanda-ku. Yasubei likewise made -careful study of the habits of singing-insects, with a view to their -breeding and nourishment; and he soon found himself able to carry on -a small trade in them. Up to that time the insects sold in Yedo would -seem to have been kept in jars or boxes: Yasubei conceived the idea of -having special cages manufactured for them. A man named Kondō, vassal to -the Lord Kamei of Honjō-ku, interested himself in the matter, and made -a number of pretty little cages which delighted Yasubei, and secured a -large order from him. The new invention found public favor at once; and -Kondō soon afterwards established the first manufactory of insect-cages. - -[Illustration: 1. A FORM OF INSECT CAGE. 2. CAGE FOR LARGE MUSICAL -INSECTS,--_Kirigirisu, Kutsuwamushi, etc._ - -3. CAGE FOR SMALL MUSICAL INSECTS, OR FIRE-FLIES] - -The demand for singing-insects increased from this time so rapidly, that -Chūzō soon found it impossible to supply all his would-be customers -directly. He therefore decided to change his business to wholesale -trade, and to sell to retail dealers only. To meet orders, he purchased -largely from peasants in the suburbs and elsewhere. Many persons were -employed by him; and Yasubei and others paid him a fixed annual sum for -sundry rights and privileges. - -Some time after this Yasubei became the first itinerant-vendor of -singing-insects. He walked through the streets crying his wares; but -hired a number of servants to carry the cages. Tradition says that while -going his rounds he used to wear a _katabira_[7] made of a much-esteemed -silk stuff called _sukiya_, together with a fine Hakata-girdle; and -that this elegant way of dressing proved of much service to him in his -business. - -Two men, whose names have been preserved, soon entered into competition -with Yasubei. The first was Yasakura Yasuzō, of Honjō-ku, by previous -occupation a _sahainin_, or property-agent. He prospered, and became -widely known as Mushi-Yasu,--“Yasu-the-Insect-Man.” His success -encouraged a former fellow-_sahainin_, Genbei of Uyeno, to go into the -same trade. Genbei likewise found insect-selling a lucrative occupation, -and earned for himself the sobriquet of Mushi-Gen, by which he is yet -remembered. His descendants in Tōkyō to-day are _amé_[8]-manufacturers; -but they still carry on the hereditary insect-business during the summer -and autumn months; and one of the firm was kind enough to furnish me -with many of the facts recorded in this little essay. - -Chūzō, the father and founder of all this curious commerce, died without -children; and sometime in the period of Bunsei (1818-1829) his business -was taken over by a distant relative named Yamasaki Seïchirō. To Chūzō’s -business, Yamasaki joined his own,--that of a toy-merchant. About the -same time a law was passed limiting the number of insect-dealers in the -municipality to thirty-six. The thirty-six then formed themselves into -a guild, called the Ōyama-Kō (“Ōyama Society”), having for patron the -divinity Sekison-Sama of the mountain Ōyama in Sagami Province.[9] But -in business the association was known as the Yedō-Mushi-Kō, or Yedo -Insect-Company. - -It is not until after this consolidation of the trade that we hear of -the _kirigirisu_,--the same musical insect which the poet Kikaku had -vainly tried to buy in the city in 1687,--being sold in Yedo. One of the -guild known as Mushiya Kojirō (“Kojirō the Insect-Merchant”), who did -business in Honjō-Ku, returning to the city after a short visit to his -native place in Kadzusa, brought back with him a number of _kirigirisu_, -which he sold at a good profit. Although long famous elsewhere, these -insects had never before been sold in Yedo. - -“When Midzu Echizen-no-Kami,” says the chronicle, “became _machi-bugyō_ -(or chief magistrate) of Yedo, the law limiting the number of -insect-dealers to thirty-six, was abolished.” Whether the guild was -subsequently dissolved the chronicle fails to mention. - -Kiriyama, the first to breed singing-insects artificially, had, like -Chūzō, built up a prosperous trade. He left a son, Kaméjirō, who was -adopted into the family of one Yumoto, living in Waséda, Ushigomé-ku. -Kaméjirō brought with him to the Yumoto family the valuable secrets of -his father’s occupation; and the Yumoto family is still celebrated in -the business of insect breeding. - -To-day the greatest insect-merchant in Tōkyō is said to be Kawasumi -Kanésaburō, of Samon-chō in Yotsuya-ku. A majority of the lesser -dealers obtain their autumn stock from him. But the insects bred -artificially, and sold in summer, are mostly furnished by the Yumoto -house. Other noted dealers are Mushi-Sei, of Shitaya-ku, and Mushi-Toku, -of Asakusa. These buy insects caught in the country, and brought to -the city by the peasants. The wholesale dealers supply both insects -and cages to multitudes of itinerant vendors who do business in the -neighborhood of the parish-temples during the _en-nichi_, or religious -festivals,--especially after dark. Almost every night of the year there -are _en-nichi_ in some quarter of the capital; and the insect-sellers -are rarely idle during the summer and autumn months. - - * * * * * - -Perhaps the following list of current Tōkyō prices[10] for -singing-insects may interest the reader:-- - - Suzumushi 3 sen 5 rin, to 4 sen. - Matsumushi 4 „ 5 „ - Kantan 10 „ 12 „ - Kin-hibari 10 „ 12 „ - Kusa-hibari 10 „ 12 „ - Kuro-hibari 8 „ 12 „ - Kutsuwamushi 10 „ 15 „ - Yamato-suzu 8 „ 12 „ - Kirigirisu 12 „ 15 „ - Emma-kōrogi 5 „ - Kanétataki 12 „ - Umaoi 10 „ - -These prices, however, rule only during the busy period of the insect -trade. In May and the latter part of June the prices are high,--for only -artificially bred insects are then in the market. In July _kirigirisu_ -brought from the country will sell as low as one sen. The _kantan_, -_kusa-hibari_, and _Yamato-suzu_ sell sometimes as low as two sen. In -August the _Emma-kōrogi_ can be bought even at the rate of ten for one -sen; and in September the _kuro-hibari_, _kanétataki_, and _umaoi_ sell -for one or one and a half sen each. But there is little variation at any -season in the prices of _suzumushi_ and of _matsumushi_. These are never -very dear, but never sell at less than three sen; and there is always a -demand for them. The _suzumushi_ is the most popular of all; and the -greater part of the profits annually made in the insect-trade is said to -be gained on the sale of this insect. - - -IV - -As will be seen from the foregoing price-list, twelve varieties -of musical insects are sold in Tōkyō. Nine can be artificially -bred,--namely the _suzumushi_, _matsumushi_, _kirigirisu_, _kantan_, -_kutsuwamushi_, _Emma-kōrogi_, _kin-hibari_, _kusa-hibari_ (also called -_Asa-suzu_), and the _Yamato-suzu_, or _Yoshino-suzu_. Three varieties, -I am told, are not bred for sale, but captured for the market: these -are the _kanétataki_, _umaoi_ or _hataori_, and _kuro-hibari_. But a -considerable number of all the insects annually offered for sale, are -caught in their native haunts. - -[Illustration: KANÉTATAKI (“THE BELL-RINGER”) (_natural size_).] - -The night-singers are, with few exceptions, easily taken. They are -captured with the help of lanterns. Being quickly attracted by light, -they approach the lanterns; and when near enough to be observed, they -can readily be covered with nets or little baskets. Males and females -are usually secured at the same time, for the creatures move about -in couples. Only the males sing; but a certain number of females are -always taken for breeding purposes. Males and females are kept in the -same vessel only for breeding: they are never left together in a cage, -because the male ceases to sing when thus mated, and will die in a short -time after pairing. - -The breeding pairs are kept in jars or other earthen vessels half-filled -with moistened clay, and are supplied every day with fresh food. They -do not live long: the male dies first, and the female survives only -until her eggs have been laid. The young insects hatched from them, -shed their skin in about forty days from birth, after which they grow -more rapidly, and soon attain their full development. In their natural -state these creatures are hatched a little before the Doyō, or Period -of Greatest Heat by the old calendar,--that is to say, about the middle -of July;--and they begin to sing in October. But when bred in a warm -room, they are hatched early in April; and, with careful feeding, they -can be offered for sale before the end of May. When very young, their -food is triturated and spread for them upon a smooth piece of wood; -but the adults are usually furnished with unprepared food,--consisting -of parings of egg-plant, melon-rind, cucumber-rind, or the soft -interior parts of the white onion. Some insects, however, are specially -nourished;--the _abura-kirigirisu_, for example, being fed with -sugar-water and slices of musk-melon. - - -V - -All the insects mentioned in the Tōkyō price-list are not of equal -interest; and several of the names appear to refer only to different -varieties of one species,--though on this point I am not positive. Some -of the insects do not seem to have yet been scientifically classed; and -I am no entomologist. But I can offer some general notes on the more -important among the little melodists, and free translations of a few out -of the countless poems about them,--beginning with the _matsumushi_, -which was celebrated in Japanese verse a thousand years ago: - - -_Matsumushi._[11] - -As ideographically written, the name of this creature signifies -“pine-insect;” but, as pronounced, it might mean also “waiting-insect,”-- -since the verb “_matsu_,” “to wait,” and the noun “_matsu_,” “pine,” -have the same sound. It is chiefly upon this double meaning of the word -as uttered that a host of Japanese poems about the _matsumushi_ are -based. Some of these are very old,--dating back to the tenth century at -least. - -[Illustration: MATSUMUSHI (_slightly enlarged_).] - -Although by no means a rare insect, the matsumushi is much esteemed for -the peculiar clearness and sweetness of its notes--(onomatopoetically -rendered in Japanese by the syllables _chin-chirorīn, chin-chirorīn_),-- -little silvery shrillings which I can best describe as resembling the -sound of an electric bell heard from a distance. The matsumushi haunts -pine-woods and cryptomeria-groves, and makes its music at night. It is a -very small insect, with a dark-brown back, and a yellowish belly. - - * * * * * - -Perhaps the oldest extant verses upon the matsumushi are those contained -in the _Kokinshū_,--a famous anthology compiled in the year 905 by the -court-poet Tsurayuki and several of his noble friends. Here we first -find that play on the name of the insect as pronounced, which was to be -repeated in a thousand different keys by a multitude of poets through -the literature of more than nine hundred years:-- - - Aki no no ni - Michi mo madoinu; - Matsumushi no - Koe suru kata ni - Yadoya karamashi. - -“In the autumn-fields I lose my way;--perhaps I might ask for lodging -in the direction of the cry of the waiting-insect;”--that is to say, -“might sleep to-night in the grass where the insects are waiting for -me.” There is in the same work a much prettier poem on the matsumushi by -Tsurayuki. - - With dusk begins to cry the male of the Waiting-insect;-- - I, too, await my beloved, and, hearing, my longing grows. - -The following poems on the same insect are less ancient but not less -interesting:-- - - Forever past and gone, the hour of the promised advent!-- - Truly the Waiter’s voice is a voice of sadness now! - - Parting is sorrowful always,--even the parting with autumn! - O plaintive matsumushi, add not thou to my pain! - - Always more clear and shrill, as the hush of the night grows deeper, - The Waiting-insect’s voice;--and I that wait in the garden, - Feel enter into my heart the voice and the moon together. - - -_Suzumushi._[12] - -The name signifies “bell-insect;” but the bell of which the sound is -thus referred to is a very small bell, or a bunch of little bells such -as a Shinto priestess uses in the sacred dances. The _suzumushi_ is a -great favorite with insect-fanciers, and is bred in great numbers for -the market. In the wild state it is found in many parts of Japan; and at -night the noise made by multitudes of _suzumushi_ in certain lonesome -places might easily be mistaken,--as it has been by myself more than -once,--for the sound of rapids. The Japanese description of the insect -as resembling “a watermelon seed”--the black kind--is excellent. It -is very small, with a black back, and a white or yellowish belly. Its -tintinnabulation--_ri-ï-ï-ï-in_, as the Japanese render the sound--might -easily be mistaken for the tinkling of a _suzu_. Both the _matsumushi_ -and the _suzumushi_ are mentioned in Japanese poems of the period of -Engi (901-922). - -[Illustration: SUZUMUSHI (_slightly enlarged_).] - -Some of the following poems on the suzumushi are very old; others are of -comparatively recent date:-- - - Yes, my dwelling is old: weeds on the roof are growing;-- - But the voice of the suzumushi that will never be old! - - To-day united in love,--we who can meet so rarely! - Hear how the insects ring!--their bells to our hearts keep time. - - The tinkle of tiny bells,--the voices of suzumushi, - I hear in the autumn-dusk,--and think of the fields at home. - - Even the moonshine sleeps on the dews of the garden-grasses; - Nothing moves in the night but the suzumushi’s voice. - - Heard in these alien fields, the voice of the suzumushi,-- - Sweet in the evening-dusk,--sounds like the sound of home. - - Vainly the suzumushi exhausts its powers of pleasing, - Always, the long night through, my tears continue to flow! - - Hark to those tinkling tones,--the chant of the suzumushi! - --If a jewel of dew could sing, it would tinkle with such a voice! - - Foolish-fond I have grown;--I feel for the suzumushi!-- - In the time of the heavy rains, what will the creature do? - - -_Hataori-mushi._ - -The _hataori_ is a beautiful bright-green grasshopper, of very -graceful shape. Two reasons are given for its curious name, which -signifies “the Weaver.” One is that, when held in a particular way, -the struggling gestures of the creature resemble the movements -of a girl weaving. The other reason is that its music seems to -imitate the sound of the reed and shuttle of a hand-loom in -operation,--_Ji-ï-ï-ï--chon-chon!--ji-ï-ï-ï--chon-chon!_ - - * * * * * - -There is a pretty folk-story about the origin of the _hataori_ and the -_kirigirisu_, which used to be told to Japanese children in former -times.--Long, long ago, says the tale, there were two very dutiful -daughters who supported their old blind father by the labor of their -hands. The elder girl used to weave, and the younger to sew. When the -old blind father died at last, these good girls grieved so much that -they soon died also. One beautiful morning, some creatures of a kind -never seen before were found making music above the graves of the -sisters. On the tomb of the elder was a pretty green insect, producing -sounds like those made by a girl weaving,--_ji-ï-ï-ï, chon-chon! -ji-ï-ï-ï, chon-chon!_ This was the first _hataori-mushi_. On the tomb of -the younger sister was an insect which kept crying out, “_Tsuzuré--sasé, -sasé!--tsuzuré, tsuzuré--sasé, sasé, sasé!_” (Torn clothes--patch, patch -them up!--torn clothes, torn clothes--patch up, patch up, patch up!) -This was the first _kirigirisu_. Then everybody knew that the spirits -of the good sisters had taken those shapes. Still every autumn they cry -to wives and daughters to work well at the loom, and warn them to repair -the winter garments of the household before the coming of the cold. - - * * * * * - -Such poems as I have been able to obtain about the _hataori_ consist of -nothing more than pretty fancies. Two, of which I offer free renderings, -are ancient,--the first by Tsurayuki; the second by a poetess -classically known as “Akinaka’s Daughter”:-- - - Weaving-insects I hear; and the fields, in their autumn-colors, - Seem of Chinese-brocade:--was this the weavers’ work? - - Gossamer-threads are spread over the shrubs and grasses: - Weaving-insects I hear;--do they weave with spider-silk? - - -_Umaoi._ - -The _umaoi_ is sometimes confounded with the _hataori_, which it -much resembles. But the true umaoi--(called _junta_ in Izumo)--is a -shorter and thicker insect than the _hataori_; and has at its tail a -hook-shaped protuberance, which the weaver-insect has not. Moreover, -there is some difference in the sounds made by the two creatures. -The music of the umaoi is not “_ji-ï-ï-ï,--chon-chon_,” but, -“_zu-ï-in-tzō!--zu-ï-in-tzō!_”--say the Japanese. - -[Illustration: UMAOI (_natural size_).] - - -_Kirigirisu._[13] - -There are different varieties of this much-prized insect. The -_abura-kirigirisu_, a day-singer, is a delicate creature, and must -be carefully nourished in confinement. The _tachi-kirigirisu_, -a night-singer, is more commonly found in the market. Captured -_kirigirisu_ sold in Tōkyō are mostly from the neighborhood of Itabashi, -Niiso, and Todogawa; and these, which fetch high prices, are considered -the best. They are large vigorous insects, uttering very clear notes. -From Kujiukuri in Kadzusa other and much cheaper _kirigirisu_ are -brought to the capital; but these have a disagreeable odor, suffer from -the attacks of a peculiar parasite, and are feeble musicians. - -[Illustration: KIRIGIRISU (_natural size_).] - -As stated elsewhere, the sounds made by the kirigirisu are said to -resemble those of the Japanese words, “_Tsuzuré--sasé! sasé!_” (Torn -clothes--patch up! patch up!); and a large proportion of the many -poems written about the insect depend for interest upon ingenious but -untranslatable allusions to those words. I offer renderings therefore of -only two poems on the _kirigirisu_,--the first by an unknown poet in the -_Kokinshū_; the second by Tadafusa:-- - - O Kirigirisu! when the clover changes color, - Are the nights then sad for you as for me that cannot sleep? - - O Kirigirisu! cry not, I pray, so loudly! - Hearing, my sorrow grows, and the autumn-night is long! - - -_Kusa-hibari._ - -[Illustration: KUSA-HIBARI (_natural size_).] - -The _kusa-hibari_, or “Grass-Lark,”--also called _Asa-suzu_, or -“Morning-Bell;” _Yabu-suzu_, or “the Little Bell of the Bamboo-grove;” -_Aki-kazé_, or “Autumn-Wind;” and _Ko-suzu-mushi_, or “the Child of the -Bell-Insect,”--is a day-singer. It is very small,--perhaps the smallest -of the insect-choir, except the _Yamato-suzu_. - -[Illustration: YAMATO-SUZU (“LITTLE-BELL OF YAMATO”) (_natural size_).] - - -_Kin-hibari._ - -The _kin-hibari_, or “Golden Lark” used to be found in great numbers -about the neighborhood of the well-known Shino-bazu-no-iké,--the great -lotos-pond of Uyeno in Tōkyō;--but of late years it has become scarce -there. The _kin-hibari_ now sold in the capital are brought from -Todogawa and Shimura. - -[Illustration: KIN-HIBARI (_natural size_).] - - -_Kuro-hibari._ - -The _kuro-hibari_, or “Black Lark,” is rather uncommon, and -comparatively dear. It is caught in the country about Tōkyō, but is -never bred. - -[Illustration: KURO-HIBARI (_natural size_).] - - -_Kōrogi._ - -There are many varieties of this -night-cricket,--called _kōrogi_ from its -music:--“_kiri-kiri-kiri-kiri!--kōro-kōro-kōro-kōro!--ghi-ï-ï-ï-ï-ï-ï!_” -One variety, the _ebi-kōrogi_, or “shrimp-kōrogi,” does not make any -sound. But the _uma-kōrogi_, or “horse-kōrogi;” the _Oni-kōrogi_, or -“Demon-kōrogi;” and the _Emma-kōrogi_, or “Cricket-of-Emma[14] [King -of the Dead],” are all good musicians. The color is blackish-brown, or -black;--the best singing-varieties have curious wavy markings on the -wings. - -[Illustration: EMMA-KŌROGI (_natural size_).] - -An interesting fact regarding the _kōrogi_ is that mention of it is made -in the very oldest collection of Japanese poems known, the _Manyōshu_, -probably compiled about the middle of the eighth century. The following -lines, by an unknown poet, which contain this mention, are therefore -considerably more than eleven hundred years old:-- - - Niwa-kusa ni - Murasamé furité - Kōrogi no - Naku oto kikeba - Aki tsukinikeri. - -[“Showers have sprinkled the garden-grass. Hearing the sound of the -crying of the kōrogi, I know that the autumn has come.”] - -[Illustration: EMMA-KŌROGI.] - - -_Kutsuwamushi._ - -There are several varieties of this extraordinary creature,--also -called onomatopoetically _gatcha-gatcha_,--which is most provokingly -described in dictionaries as “a kind of noisy cricket”! The variety -commonly sold in Tōkyō has a green back, and a yellowish-white abdomen; -but there are also brown and reddish varieties. The _kutsuwamushi_ is -difficult to capture, but easy to breed. As the _tsuku-tsuku-bōshi_ -is the most wonderful musician among the sun-loving cicadæ or _semi_, -so the _kutsuwamushi_ is the most wonderful of night-crickets. It -owes its name, which means “The Bridle-bit-Insect,” to its noise, -which resembles the jingling and ringing of the old-fashioned Japanese -bridle-bit (_kutsuwa_). But the sound is really much louder and much -more complicated than ever was the jingling of a single _kutsuwa_; -and the accuracy of the comparison is not easily discerned while the -creature is storming beside you. Without the evidence of one’s own eyes, -it were hard to believe that so small a life could make so prodigious -a noise. Certainly the vibratory apparatus in this insect must be -very complicated. The sound begins with a thin sharp whizzing, as of -leaking steam, and slowly strengthens;--then to the whizzing is suddenly -added a quick dry clatter, as of castanets;--and then, as the whole -machinery rushes into operation, you hear, high above the whizzing and -the clatter, a torrent of rapid ringing tones like the tapping of a -gong. These, the last to begin, are also the first to cease; then the -castanets stop; and finally the whizzing dies;--but the full orchestra -may remain in operation for several hours at a time, without a pause. -Heard from far away at night the sound is pleasant, and is really so -much like the ringing of a bridle-bit, that when you first listen to it -you cannot but feel how much real poetry belongs to the name of this -insect,--celebrated from of old as “playing at ghostly escort in ways -where no man can pass.” - -[Illustration: KUTSUWAMUSHI (_natural size_).] - -The most ancient poem on the _kutsuwamushi_ is perhaps the following, by -the Lady Idzumi-Shikibu:-- - - Waga seko wa - Koma ni makasété - Kinikeri to, - Kiku ni kikasuru - Kutsuwamushi kana! - ---which might be thus freely rendered: - - Listen!--his bridle rings;--that is surely my husband - Homeward hurrying now--fast as the horse can bear him!... - Ah! my ear was deceived!--only the Kutsuwamushi! - - -_Kantan._ - -This insect--also called _kantan-gisu_, and _kantan-no-kirigirisu_,--is -a dark-brown night-cricket. Its note--“_zi-ï-ï-ï-in_” is peculiar: I -can only compare it to the prolonged twang of a bow-string. But this -comparison is not satisfactory, because there is a penetrant metallic -quality in the twang, impossible to describe. - -[Illustration: KANTAN (_natural size_).] - - -VI - -Besides poems about the chanting of particular insects, there are -countless Japanese poems, ancient and modern, upon the voices of -night-insects in general,--chiefly in relation to the autumn season. Out -of a multitude I have selected and translated a few of the more famous -only, as typical of the sentiment or fancy of hundreds. Although some -of my renderings are far from literal as to language, I believe that -they express with tolerable faithfulness the thought and feeling of the -originals:-- - - Not for my sake alone, I know, is the autumn’s coming;-- - Yet, hearing the insects sing, at once my heart grows sad. - - KOKINSHŪ. - - Faint in the moonshine sounds the chorus of insect-voices: - To-night the sadness of autumn speaks in their plaintive tone. - - I never can find repose in the chilly nights of autumn, - Because of the pain I hear in the insects’ plaintive song. - - How must it be in the fields where the dews are falling thickly! - In the insect-voices that reach me I hear the tingling of cold. - - Never I dare to take my way through the grass in autumn: - Should I tread upon insect-voices[15]--what would my feelings be! - - The song is ever the same, but the tones of the insects differ, - Maybe their sorrows vary, according to their hearts. - - IDZUMI-SHIKIBU. - - Changed is my childhood’s home--all but those insect-voices: - I think they are trying to speak of happier days that were. - - These trembling dews on the grass--are they tears for the death of - autumn?-- - Tears of the insect-singers that now so sadly cry? - -It might be thought that several of the poems above given were intended -to express either a real or an affected sympathy with imagined -insect-pain. But this would be a wrong interpretation. In most -compositions of this class, the artistic purpose is to suggest, by -indirect means, various phases of the emotion of love,--especially that -melancholy which lends its own passional tone to the aspects and the -voices of nature. The baroque fancy that dew might be insect-tears, -is by its very exaggeration intended to indicate the extravagance of -grief, as well as to suggest that human tears have been freshly shed. -The verses in which a woman declares that her heart has become too -affectionate, since she cannot but feel for the bell-insect during a -heavy shower, really bespeak the fond anxiety felt for some absent -beloved, travelling in the time of the great rains. Again, in the -lines about “treading on insect-voices,” the dainty scruple is uttered -only as a hint of that intensification of feminine tenderness which -love creates. And a still more remarkable example of this indirect -double-suggestiveness is offered by the little poem prefacing this -article,-- - - “O insect, insect!--think you that Karma can be exhausted by song?” - -The Western reader would probably suppose that the insect-condition, -or insect-state-of-being, is here referred to; but the real thought of -the speaker, presumably a woman, is that her own sorrow is the result -of faults committed in former lives, and is therefore impossible to -alleviate. - -It will have been observed that a majority of the verses cited refer to -autumn and to the sensations of autumn. Certainly Japanese poets have -not been insensible to the real melancholy inspired by autumn,--that -vague strange annual revival of ancestral pain: dim inherited sorrow -of millions of memories associated through millions of years with the -death of summer;--but in nearly every utterance of this melancholy, the -veritable allusion is to grief of parting. With its color-changes, its -leaf-whirlings, and the ghostly plaint of its insect-voices, autumn -Buddhistically symbolizes impermanency, the certainty of bereavement, -the pain that clings to all desire, and the sadness of isolation. - - * * * * * - -But even if these poems on insects were primarily intended to shadow -amorous emotion, do they not reflect also for us the subtlest influences -of nature,--wild pure nature,--upon imagination and memory? Does not -the place accorded to insect-melody, in the home-life as well as in -the literature of Japan, prove an æsthetic sensibility developed in -directions that yet remain for us almost unexplored? Does not the -shrilling booth of the insect-seller at a night-festival proclaim even -a popular and universal comprehension of things divined in the West -only by our rarest poets:--the pleasure-pain of autumn’s beauty, the -weird sweetness of the voices of the night, the magical quickening of -remembrance by echoes of forest and field? Surely we have something -to learn from the people in whose mind the simple chant of a cricket -can awaken whole fairy-swarms of tender and delicate fancies. We may -boast of being their masters in the mechanical,--their teachers of the -artificial in all its varieties of ugliness;--but in the knowledge of -the natural,--in the feeling of the joy and beauty of earth,--they -exceed us like the Greeks of old. Yet perhaps it will be only when -our blind aggressive industrialism has wasted and sterilized their -paradise,--substituting everywhere for beauty the utilitarian, the -conventional, the vulgar, the utterly hideous,--that we shall begin -with remorseful amazement to comprehend the charm of that which we -destroyed. - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] _Nowaki_ is the name given to certain destructive storms usually -occurring toward the end of autumn. All the chapters of the Genji -Monogatari have remarkably poetical and effective titles. There is an -English translation, by Mr. Kenchō Suyematsu, of the first seventeen -chapters. - -[2] The Kurando, or Kurōdo, was an official intrusted with the care of -the imperial records. - -[3] A _chō_ is about one-fifteenth of a mile. - -[4] _Hagi_ is the name commonly given to the bush-clover. _Ominameshi_ -is the common term for the _valeriana officinalis_. - -[5] That is to say, there are now many people who go every night to the -graveyards, to decorate and prepare the graves before the great Festival -of the Dead. - -[6] Most of these names survive in the appellations of well-known -districts of the present Tōkyō. - -[7] _Katabira_ is a name given to many kinds of light textures used -for summer-robes. The material is usually hemp, but sometimes, as -in the case referred to here, of fine silk. Some of these robes are -transparent, and very beautiful.--Hakata, in Kyūshū, is still famous for -the silk girdles made there. The fabric is very heavy and strong. - -[8] _Amé_ is a nutritive gelatinous extract obtained from wheat and -other substances. It is sold in many forms--as candy, as a syrupy liquid -resembling molasses, as a sweet hot drink, as a solid jelly. Children -are very fond of it. Its principal element is starch-sugar. - -[9] Ōyama mountain in Sagami is a great resort of Pilgrims. There -is a celebrated temple there, dedicated to Iwanaga-Himé (“Long-Rock -Princess”), sister of the beautiful Goddess of Fuji. Sekison-San is a -popular name both for the divinity and for the mountain itself. - -[10] Prices of the year 1897. - -[11] _Calyptotryphus Marmoratus. (?)_ - -[12] _Homeogryllus Japonicus._ - -[13] _Locusta Japonica. (?)_ - -[14] Sanscrit: _Yama_. Probably this name was given to the insect on -account of its large staring eyes. Images of King Emma are always made -with very big and awful eyes. - -[15] _Mushi no koe fumu._ - - - - -A Question in the Zen Texts - - -I - -My friend opened a thin yellow volume of that marvellous text which -proclaims at sight the patience of the Buddhist engraver. Movable -Chinese types may be very useful; but the best of which they are -capable is ugliness itself when compared with the beauty of the old -block-printing. - -“I have a queer story for you,” he said. - -“A Japanese story?” - -“No,--Chinese.” - -“What is the book?” - -“According to Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters of the -title, we call it _Mu-Mon-Kwan_, which means ‘The Gateless Barrier.’ -It is one of the books especially studied by the Zen sect, or sect -of Dhyâna. A peculiarity of some of the Dhyâna texts,--this being a -good example,--is that they are not explanatory. They only suggest. -Questions are put; but the student must think out the answers for -himself. He must _think_ them out, but not write them. You know that -Dhyâna represents human effort to reach, through meditation, zones of -thought beyond the range of verbal expression; and any thought once -narrowed into utterance loses all Dhyâna quality.... Well, this story is -supposed to be true; but it is used only for a Dhyâna question. There -are three different Chinese versions of it; and I can give you the -substance of the three.” - -Which he did as follows:-- - - -II - ---_The story of the girl Ts’ing, which is told in the -Lui-shwo-li-hwan-ki, cited by the Ching-tang-luh, and commented upon in -the Wu-mu-kwan (called by the Japanese Mu-Mon-Kwan), which is a book of -the Zen sect:_-- - - * * * * * - -There lived in Han-yang a man called Chang-Kien, whose child-daughter, -Ts’ing, was of peerless beauty. He had also a nephew called -Wang-Chau,--a very handsome boy. The children played together, and were -fond of each other. Once Kien jestingly said to his nephew:--“Some day -I will marry you to my little daughter.” Both children remembered these -words; and they believed themselves thus betrothed. - -When Ts’ing grew up, a man of rank asked for her in marriage; and her -father decided to comply with the demand. Ts’ing was greatly troubled by -this decision. As for Chau, he was so much angered and grieved that he -resolved to leave home, and go to another province. The next day he got -a boat ready for his journey, and after sunset, without bidding farewell -to any one, he proceeded up the river. But in the middle of the night he -was startled by a voice calling to him, “Wait!--it is I!”--and he saw a -girl running along the bank towards the boat. It was Ts’ing. Chau was -unspeakably delighted. She sprang into the boat; and the lovers found -their way safely to the province of Chuh. - -In the province of Chuh they lived happily for six years; and they had -two children. But Ts’ing could not forget her parents, and often longed -to see them again. At last she said to her husband:--“Because in former -time I could not bear to break the promise made to you, I ran away -with you and forsook my parents,--although knowing that I owed them all -possible duty and affection. Would it not now be well to try to obtain -their forgiveness?” “Do not grieve yourself about that,” said Chau;--“we -shall go to see them.” He ordered a boat to be prepared; and a few days -later he returned with his wife to Han-yang. - -According to custom in such cases, the husband first went to the house -of Kien, leaving Ts’ing alone in the boat. Kien, welcomed his nephew -with every sign of joy, and said:-- - -“How much I have been longing to see you! I was often afraid that -something had happened to you.” - -Chau answered respectfully:-- - -“I am distressed by the undeserved kindness of your words. It is to beg -your forgiveness that I have come.” - -But Kien did not seem to understand. He asked:-- - -“To what matter do you refer?” - -“I feared,” said Chau, “that you were angry with me for having run away -with Ts’ing. I took her with me to the province of Chuh.” - -“What Ts’ing was that?” asked Kien. - -“Your daughter Ts’ing,” answered Chau, beginning to suspect his -father-in-law of some malevolent design. - -“What are you talking about?” cried Kien, with every appearance of -astonishment. “My daughter Ts’ing has been sick in bed all these -years,--ever since the time when you went away.” - -“Your daughter Ts’ing,” returned Chau, becoming angry, “has not been -sick. She has been my wife for six years; and we have two children; and -we have both returned to this place only to seek your pardon. Therefore -please do not mock us!” - -For a moment the two looked at each other in silence. Then Kien arose, -and motioning to his nephew to follow, led the way to an inner room -where a sick girl was lying. And Chau, to his utter amazement, saw the -face of Ts’ing,--beautiful, but strangely thin and pale. - -“She cannot speak,” explained the old man; “but she can understand.” And -Kien said to her, laughingly:--“Chau tells me that you ran away with -him, and that you gave him two children.” - -The sick girl looked at Chau, and smiled; but remained silent. - -“Now come with me to the river,” said the bewildered visitor to his -father-in-law. “For I can assure you,--in spite of what I have seen in -this house,--that your daughter Ts’ing is at this moment in my boat.” - -They went to the river; and there, indeed, was the young wife, waiting. -And seeing her father, she bowed down before him, and besought his -pardon. - -Kien said to her:-- - -“If you really be my daughter, I have nothing but love for you. Yet -though you seem to be my daughter, there is something which I cannot -understand.... Come with us to the house.” - -So the three proceeded toward the house. As they neared it, they saw -that the sick girl,--who had not before left her bed for years,--was -coming to meet them, smiling as if much delighted. And the two Ts’ings -approached each other. But then--nobody could ever tell how--they -suddenly melted into each other, and became one body, one person, -one Ts’ing,--even more beautiful than before, and showing no sign of -sickness or of sorrow. - -Kien said to Chau:-- - -“Ever since the day of your going, my daughter was dumb, and most of -the time like a person who had taken too much wine. Now I know that her -spirit was absent.” - -Ts’ing herself said:-- - -“Really I never knew that I was at home. I saw Chau going away in silent -anger; and the same night I dreamed that I ran after his boat.... But -now I cannot tell which was really I,--the I that went away in the boat, -or the I that stayed at home.” - - -III - -“That is the whole of the story,” my friend observed. “Now there is a -note about it in the _Mu-Mon-Kwan_ that may interest you. This note -says:--‘The fifth patriarch of the Zen sect once asked a priest,--”_In -the case of the separation of the spirit of the girl Ts’ing, which was -the true Ts’ing?_”’ It was only because of this question that the story -was cited in the book. But the question is not answered. The author only -remarks:--‘If you can decide which was the real Ts’ing, then you will -have learned that to go out of one envelope and into another is merely -like putting up at an inn. But if you have not yet reached this degree -of enlightenment, take heed that you do not wander aimlessly about the -world. Otherwise, when Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind shall suddenly be -dissipated, you will be like a crab with seven hands and eight legs, -thrown into boiling water. And in that time do not say that you were -never told about the _Thing_.’... Now the _Thing_--” - -“I do not want to hear about the Thing,” I interrupted,--“nor about the -crab with seven hands and eight legs. I want to hear about the clothes.” - -“What clothes?” - -“At the time of their meeting, the two Ts’ings would have been -differently dressed,--very differently, perhaps; for one was a maid, -and the other a wife. Did the clothes of the two also blend together? -Suppose that one had a silk robe and the other a robe of cotton, would -these have mixed into a texture of silk and cotton? Suppose that one -was wearing a blue girdle, and the other a yellow girdle, would the -result have been a green girdle?... Or did one Ts’ing simply slip out -of her costume, and leave it on the ground, like the cast-off shell of a -cicada?” - -“None of the texts say anything about the clothes,” my friend replied: -“so I cannot tell you. But the subject is quite irrelevant, from the -Buddhist point of view. The doctrinal question is the question of what I -suppose you would call the personality of Ts’ing.” - -“And yet it is not answered,” I said. - -“It is best answered,” my friend replied, “by not being answered.” - -“How so?” - -“Because there is no such thing as personality.” - - - - -The Literature of the Dead - - Shindaréba koso ikitaré. - - “Only because of having died, does one enter into life.” - --_Buddhist proverb._ - - -I - -Behind my dwelling, but hidden from view by a very lofty curtain of -trees, there is a Buddhist temple, with a cemetery attached to it. The -cemetery itself is in a grove of pines, many centuries old; and the -temple stands in a great quaint lonesome garden. Its religious name is -_Ji-shō-in_; but the people call it Kobudera, which means the Gnarled, -or Knobby Temple, because it is built of undressed timber,--great logs -of _hinoki_, selected for their beauty or strangeness of shape, and -simply prepared for the builder by the removal of limbs and bark. But -such gnarled and knobby wood is precious: it is of the hardest and most -enduring, and costs far more than common building-material,--as might -be divined from the fact that the beautiful alcoves and the choicest -parts of Japanese interiors are finished with wood of a similar kind. -To build Kobudera was an undertaking worthy of a prince; and, as a -matter of history, it was a prince who erected it, for a place of family -worship. There is a doubtful tradition that two designs were submitted -to him by the architect, and that he chose the more fantastic one under -the innocent impression that undressed timber would prove cheap. But -whether it owes its existence to a mistake or not, Kobudera remains one -of the most interesting temples of Japan. The public have now almost -forgotten its existence;--but it was famous in the time of Iyemitsu; -and its appellation, Ji-shō-in, was taken from the kaimyō of one of the -great Shogun’s ladies, whose superb tomb may be seen in its cemetery. -Before Meiji, the temple was isolated among woods and fields; but the -city has now swallowed up most of the green spaces that once secluded -it, and has pushed out the ugliest of new streets directly in front of -its gate. - -[Illustration: GATE OF KOBUDERA] - -This gate--a structure of gnarled logs, with a tiled and tilted Chinese -roof--is a fitting preface to the queer style of the temple itself. -From either gable-end of the gate-roof, a demon-head, grinning under -triple horns, looks down upon the visitor.[16] Within, except at the -hours of prayer, all is green silence. Children do not play in the -court--perhaps because the temple is a private one. The ground is -everywhere hidden by a fine thick moss of so warm a color, that the -brightest foliage of the varied shrubbery above it looks sombre by -contrast; and the bases of walls, the pedestals of monuments, the -stonework of the bell-tower, the masonry of the ancient well, are -muffled with the same luminous growth. Maples and pines and cryptomerias -screen the façade of the temple; and, if your visit be in autumn, you -may find the whole court filled with the sweet heavy perfume of the -_mokusei_[17]-blossom. After having looked at the strange temple, you -would find it worth while to enter the cemetery, by the black gate on -the west side of the court. - - * * * * * - -I like to wander in that cemetery,--partly because in the twilight of -its great trees, and in the silence of centuries which has gathered -about them, one can forget the city and its turmoil, and dream out of -space and time,--but much more because it is full of beauty, and of the -poetry of great faith. Indeed of such poetry it possesses riches quite -exceptional. Each Buddhist sect has its own tenets, rites, and forms; -and the special character of these is reflected in the iconography and -epigraphy of its burial-grounds,--so that for any experienced eye a -Tendai graveyard is readily distinguishable from a Shingon graveyard, -or a Zen graveyard from one belonging to a Nichiren congregation. But -at Kobudera the inscriptions and the sculptures peculiar to several -Buddhist sects can be studied side by side. Founded for the Hokké, -or Nichiren rite, the temple nevertheless passed, in the course of -generations, under the control of other sects--the last being the -Tendai;--and thus its cemetery now offers a most interesting medley of -the emblems and the epitaphic formularies of various persuasions. It was -here that I first learned, under the patient teaching of an Oriental -friend, something about the Buddhist literature of the dead. - - * * * * * - -No one able to feel beauty could refuse to confess the charm of the -old Buddhist cemeteries,--with their immemorial trees, their evergreen -mazes of shrubbery trimmed into quaintest shapes, the carpet-softness -of their mossed paths, the weird but unquestionable art of their -monuments. And no great knowledge of Buddhism is needed to enable you, -even at first sight, to understand something of this art. You would -recognize the lotos chiselled upon tombs or water-tanks, and would -doubtless observe that the designs of the pedestals represent a lotos -of eight petals,--though you might not know that these eight petals -symbolize the Eight Intelligences. You would recognize the _manji_, -or svastika, figuring the Wheel of the Law,--though ignorant of its -relation to the Mahâyâna philosophy. You would perhaps be able to -recognize also the images of certain Buddhas,--though not aware of the -meaning of their attitudes or emblems in relation to mystical ecstasy -or to the manifestation of the Six Supernatural Powers. And you would -be touched by the simple pathos of the offerings,--the incense and the -flowers before the tombs, the water poured out for the dead,--even -though unable to divine the deeper pathos of the beliefs that make the -cult. But unless an excellent Chinese scholar as well as a Buddhist -philosopher, all book-knowledge of the great religion would still -leave you helpless in a world of riddles. The marvellous texts,--the -exquisite Chinese scriptures chiselled into the granite of tombs, or -limned by a master-brush upon the smooth wood of the _sotoba_,--will -yield their secrets only to an interpreter of no common powers. And -the more you become familiar with their aspect, the more the mystery -of them tantalizes,--especially after you have learned that a literal -translation of them would mean, in the majority of cases, exactly -nothing! - - * * * * * - -What strange thoughts have been thus recorded and yet concealed? Are -they complex and subtle as the characters that stand for them? Are -they beautiful also like those characters,--with some undreamed-of, -surprising beauty, such as might inform the language of another planet? - - -II - -As for subtlety and complexity, much of this mortuary literature is -comparable to the Veil of Isis. Behind the mystery of the text--in which -almost every character has two readings--there is the mystery of the -phrase; and again behind this are successions of riddles belonging to a -gnosticism older than all the wisdom of the Occident, and deep as the -abysses of Space. Fortunately the most occult texts are also the least -interesting, and bear little relation to the purpose of this essay. -The majority are attached, not to the sculptured, but to the written -and impermanent literature of cemeteries,--not to the stone monuments, -but to the sotoba: those tall narrow laths of unpainted wood which are -planted above the graves at fixed, but gradually increasing intervals, -during a period of one hundred years.[18] - -[Illustration: SOTOBA IN KOBUDERA CEMETERY - -(_The upper characters are “BONTI”--modified Sanskrit_)] - -The uselessness of any exact translation of these inscriptions may be -exemplified by a word-for-word rendering of two sentences written upon -the sotoba used by the older sects. What meaning can you find in such -a term as “Law-sphere-substance-nature-wisdom,” or such an invocation -as “Ether, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth!”--for an invocation it really -is? To understand these words one must first know that, in the -doctrine of the mystical sects, the universe is composed of Five Great -Elements which are identical with Five Buddhas; that each of the Five -Buddhas contains the rest; and that the Five are One by essence, though -varying in their phenomenal manifestations. The name of an element has -thus three significations. The word Fire, for example, means flame as -objective appearance; it means flame also as the manifestation of a -particular Buddha; and it likewise means the special quality of wisdom -or power attributed to that Buddha. Perhaps this doctrine will be more -easily understood by the help of the following Shingon classification of -the Five Elements in their Buddhist relations:-- - - I. _Hō-kai-tai-shō-chi_ - - (Sansc. Dhârma-dhâtu-prakrit-gñâna), or - “Law-sphere-substance-nature-wisdom,”--signifying the wisdom - that becomes the substance of things. This is the element Ether. - Ether personified is Dai-Nichi-Nyōrai, the “Great Sun-Buddha” - (Mahâvairokana Tathâgata), who “holds the seal of Wisdom.” - - - II. _Dai-en-kyō-chi_ - - (Âdarsana-gñâna), or “Great-round-mirror-wisdom,”--that is to - say the divine power making images manifest. This is the element - Earth. Earth personified is Ashuku Nyōrai, the “Immovable Tathâgata” - (Akshobhya). - - - III. _Byō-dō-shō-chi_ - - (Samatâ-gñâna), “Even-equal-nature-wisdom,”--that is, the - wisdom making no distinction of persons or of things. The element - Fire. Personified, Fire is Hō-shō Nyōrai, or “Gem-Birth” Buddha - (Ratnasambhava Tathâgata), presiding over virtue and happiness. - - - IV. _Myō-kwan-zatsu-chi_ - - (Pratyavekshana-gñâna), - “Wondrously-observing-considering-wisdom;”--that is, the wisdom - distinguishing clearly truth from error, destroying doubts, and - presiding over the preaching of the Law. The element Water. Water - personified is Amida Nyōrai, the Buddha of Immeasurable Light - (Amitâbha Tathâgata). - - - V. _Jō-shō-sa-chi_ - - (Krityânushthâna-gñâna), the - “Wisdom-of-accomplishing-what-is-to-be-done;”--that is to - say, the divine wisdom that helps beings to reach Nirvana. - The element Air. Air personified is Fu-kū-jō-ju, the - “Unfailing-of-Accomplishment,”--more commonly called Fuku-Nyōrai - (Amoghasiddhi, or Sâkyamuni).[19] - -Now the doctrine that each of the Five Buddhas contains the rest, and -that all are essentially One, is symbolized in these texts by an -extraordinary use of characters called _Bon-ji_,--which are recognizably -Sanscrit letters. The name of each element can be written with any one -of four characters,--all having for Buddhists the same meaning, though -differing as to sound and form. Thus the characters standing for Fire -would read, according to Japanese pronunciation, _Ra_, _Ran_, _Raän_, -and _Raku_;--and the characters signifying Ether, _Kya_, _Ken_, _Keën_, -and _Kyaku_. By different combinations of the twenty characters making -the five sets, different supernatural powers and different Buddhas -are indicated; and the indication is further helped by an additional -symbolic character, called _Shū-ji_ or “seed-word,” placed immediately -after the names of the elements. The reader will now comprehend the -meaning of the invocatory “Ether, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth!” and of the -strange names of divine wisdom written upon sotoba; but the enigmas -offered by even a single sotoba may be much more complicated than the -foregoing examples suggest. There are unimaginable acrostics; there are -rules, varying according to sect, for the position of texts in relation -to the points of the compass; and there are kabalisms based upon the -multiple values of certain Chinese ideographs. The whole subject of -esoteric inscriptions would require volumes to explain; and the reader -will not be sorry, I fancy, to abandon it at this point in favor of -texts possessing a simpler and a more humane interest. - -The really attractive part of Buddhist cemetery-literature mostly -consists of sentences taken from the sûtras or the sastras; and the -attraction is due not only to the intrinsic beauty of the faith which -these sentences express, but also to the fact that they will be found -to represent, in epitome, a complete body of Buddhist doctrine. Like -the mystical inscriptions above-mentioned, they belong to the sotoba, -not to the gravestones; but, while the invocations usually occupy the -upper and front part of the sotoba, these sutra-texts are commonly -written upon the back. In addition to scriptural and invocatory texts, -each sotoba bears the name of the giver, the kaimyō of the dead, and the -name of a commemorative anniversary. Sometimes a brief prayer is also -inscribed, or a statement of the pious purpose inspiring the erection of -the sotoba. Before considering the scripture-texts proper, in relation -to their embodiment of doctrine, I submit examples of the general -character and plan of sotoba inscriptions. They are written upon both -sides of the wood, be it observed; but I have not thought it necessary -to specify which texts belong to the front, and which to the back of the -sotoba,--since the rules concerning such position differ according to -sect:-- - - - I.--SOTOBA OF THE NICHIREN SECT. - - (Invocation.) - - _Ether, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth!--Hail to the Sutra of the - Lotos of the Good Law!_ - - (Commemorative text.) - - To-day, the service of the third year has been performed in - order that our lay-brother [_kaimyō_] may be enabled to cut off the - bonds of illusion, to open the Eye of Enlightenment, to remain free - from all pain, and to enter into bliss. - - (Sastra text.) - - MYŌ-HŌ-KYŌ-RIKI-SOKU-SHIN-JŌ-BUTSU! - - Even this body [of flesh] by the virtue of the Sutra of the - Excellent Law, enters into Buddhahood. - - -II.--SOTOBA OF THE NICHIREN SECT. - - (Invocation.) - -_Hail to the Sutra of the Lotos of the Good Law!_ - - (Commemorative text.) - - The rite of feeding the hungry spirits having been fulfilled, - and the service for the dead having been performed, this sotoba is - set up in commemoration of the service and the offerings made with - prayer for the salvation of Buddha on behalf of--(_kaimyō_ follows). - - (Prayer--with English translation.) - - _Gan i shi kudoku - Fu-gyū o issai - Gatō yo shujō - Kai-gu jō butsudo._ - - By virtue of this good action I beseech that the merit of it may - be extended to all, and that we and all living beings may fulfil the - Way of Buddha.[20] - -_The fifth day of the seventh month of the thirtieth year of Meiji, by ----- ----, this sotoba has been set up._ - - -III.--SOTOBA OF THE JŌDO SECT. - - (Invocation.) - -_Hail to the Buddha Amida!_ - - (Commemorative mention.) - - This for the sake of--(_here kaimyō_ follows). - - (Sutra text.) - -_The Buddha of the Golden Mouth, who possesses the -Great-Round-Mirror-Wisdom,[21] has said: “The glorious light of Amida -illuminates all the worlds of the Ten Directions, and takes into itself -and never abandons all living beings who fix their thoughts upon that -Buddha!”_ - - -IV.--SOTOBA OF THE ZEN SECT. - - (Sastra text.) - -_The Dai-en-kyō-chi-kyō declares:--“By entering deeply into meditation, -one may behold the Buddhas of the Ten Directions.”_ - - (Commemorative text.) - - That the noble Elder Sister[22] Chi-Shō-In-Kō-Un-Tei-Myō,[23] - now dwelling in the House of Shining Wisdom, may instantly attain to - Bodhi.[24] - - (Prayer.) - - Let whomsoever looks upon this sotoba be forever delivered from - the Three Evil Ways.[25] - - (Record.) - -_In the thirtieth year of Meiji, on the first day of the fifth month, by -the house of Inouyé, this sotoba has been set up._ - -The foregoing will doubtless suffice as specimens of the ordinary -forms of inscription. The Buddha praised or invoked is always the -Buddha especially revered by the sect from whose sutra or sastra the -quotation is chosen;--sometimes also the divine power of a Bodhisattva -is extolled, as in the following Zen inscription:-- - - _“The Sutra of Kwannon says:--‘In all the provinces of all the - countries in the Ten Directions, there is not even one temple where - Kwannon is not self-revealed.’”_ - -Sometimes the scripture text more definitely assumes the character of a -praise-offering, as the following juxtaposition suggests:-- - - “_The Buddha of Immeasurable Light illuminates all worlds in the - Ten Directions of Space._” - - This for the sake of the swift salvation into Buddhahood of our - lay-brother named the Great-Secure-Retired-Scholar. - -Sometimes we also find a verse of praise or an invocation addressed to -the apotheosized spirit of the founder of the sect,--a common example -being furnished by the sotoba of the Shingon rite:-- - - “_Hail to the Great Teacher Haijō-Kongō!_”[26] - -Rarely the little prayer for the salvation of the dead assumes, as in -the following beautiful example, the language of unconscious poetry:-- - - “_This for the sake of our noble Elder Sister ----. May the - Lotos of Bliss by virtue of these prayers be made to bloom for her, - and to bear the fruit of Buddhahood!_”[27] - -But usually the prayers are of the simplest, and differ from each other -only in the use of peculiar Buddhist terms:-- - - --“This for the sake of the true happiness of our - lay-brother--[_kaimyō_],--that he may obtain the Supreme Perfect - Enlightenment.” - - --“This tower is set up for the sake of ----, that he may obtain - complete Sambodhi.”[28] - - --“This precious tower and these offerings for the sake of ---- - ----,--that he may obtain the _Anattra-Sammyak-Sambodhi_.”[29] - - -One other subject of interest belonging to the merely commemorative -texts of sotoba remains to be mentioned,--the names of certain Buddhist -services for the dead. There are two classes of such services: those -performed within one hundred days after death, and those celebrated at -fixed intervals during a term of one hundred years,--on the 1st, 2d, -7th, 13th, 17th, 24th, 33d, 50th, and 100th anniversaries of the death. -In the Zen rite these commemorative services--(perhaps we might call -them masses)--have singular mystical names by which they are recorded -upon the sotoba of the sect,--such as Lesser Happiness, Greater -Happiness, Broad Repose, The Bright Caress, and The Great Caress. - -But we shall now turn to the study of the scripture-texts proper,--those -citations from sûtra or sastra which form the main portion of a -sotoba-writing; expounding the highest truth of Buddhist belief, or -speaking the deepest thought of Eastern philosophy. - - -III - -At the beginning of my studies in the Kobudera cemetery, I was not -less impressed by the quiet cheerfulness of the sotoba-texts, than by -their poetry and their philosophy. In none did I find even a shadow -of sadness: the greater number were utterances of a faith that seemed -to me wider and deeper than our own,--sublime proclamations of the -eternal and infinite nature of Thought, the unity of all mind, and the -certainty of universal salvation. And other surprises awaited me in -this strange literature. Texts or fragments of texts, that at first -rendering appeared of the simplest, would yield to learned commentary -profundities of significance absolutely startling. Phrases, seemingly -artless, would suddenly reveal a dual suggestiveness,--a two-fold -idealism,--a beauty at once exoteric and mystical. Of this latter -variety of inscription the following is a good example:-- - - “_The flower having bloomed last night, the World has become - fragrant._”[30] - -In the language of the higher Buddhism, this means that through death -a spirit has been released from the darkness of illusion, even as -the perfume of a blossom is set free at the breaking of the bud, and -that the divine Absolute, or World of Law, is refreshed by the new -presence, as a whole garden might be made fragrant by the blooming of -some precious growth. But in the popular language of Buddhism, the same -words signify that in the Lotos-Lake of Paradise another magical flower -has opened for the Apparitional Rebirth into highest bliss of the being -loved and lost on earth, and that Heaven rejoices for the advent of -another Buddha. - - * * * * * - -But I desire rather to represent the general result of my studies, than -to point out the special beauties of this epitaphic literature: and my -purpose will be most easily attained by arranging and considering the -inscriptions in a certain doctrinal order. - -A great variety of sotoba-texts refer, directly or indirectly, to the -Lotos-Flower Paradise of Amida,--or, as it is more often called, the -Paradise of the West. The following are typical:-- - - “_The Amida-Kyō says:--‘All who enter into that country enter - likewise into that state of virtue from which there can be no - turning back.’_”[31] - - “_The Text of Gold proclaims:--‘In that world they receive - bliss only: therefore that world is called Gokuraku,--exceeding - bliss.’_”[32] - - “_Hail unto the Lord Amida Buddha! The Golden Mouth has - said,--‘All living beings that fix their thoughts upon the Buddha - shall be received and welcomed into his Paradise;--never shall they - be forsaken.’_”[33] - -But texts like these, though dear to popular faith, make no appeal to -the higher Buddhism, which admits heaven as a temporary condition only, -not to be desired by the wise. Indeed, the Mahâyâna texts, describing -Sukhâvatî, themselves suggest its essentially illusive character,--a -world of jewel-lakes and perfumed airs and magical birds, but a world -also in which the voices of winds and waters and singers perpetually -preach the unreality of self and the impermanency of all things. And -even the existence of this Western Paradise might seem to be denied in -other sotoba-texts of deeper significance,--such as this:-- - - “_Originally there is no East or West: where then can South or - North be?_”[34] - -“Originally,”--that is to say, in relation to the Infinite. The -relations and the ideas of the Conditioned cease to exist for the -Unconditioned. Yet this truth does not really imply denial of other -worlds of relation,--states of bliss to which the strong may rise, and -states of pain to which the weak may descend. It is a reminder only. All -conditions are impermanent, and so, in the profounder sense, unreal. -The Absolute,--the Supreme Buddha,--is the sole Reality. This doctrine -appears in many sotoba-inscriptions:-- - - “_The Blue Mountain of itself remains eternally unmoved: the - White Clouds come of themselves and go._”[35] - -By “the Blue Mountain” is meant the Sole Reality of Mind;--by “the White -Clouds,” the phenomenal universe. Yet the universe exists but as a dream -of Mind:-- - - “_If any one desire to obtain full knowledge of all the - Buddhas of the past, the present, and the future, let him learn - to comprehend the true nature of the World of Law. Then will he - perceive that all things are but the production of Mind._”[36] - - “_By the learning and the practice of the True Doctrine, the - Non-Apparent becomes [for us] the only Reality._”[37] - -The universe is a phantom, and a phantom likewise the body of man, -together with all emotions, ideas, and memories that make up the complex -of his sensuous Self. But is this evanescent Self the whole of man’s -inner being? Not so, proclaim the sotoba:-- - - “_All living beings have the nature of Buddha. The Nyōrai,[38] - eternally living, is alone unchangeable._”[39] - - “_The Kegon-Kyō[40] declares:--‘In all living creatures there - exists, and has existed from the beginning, the Real-Law Nature: all - by their nature contain the original essence of Buddha.’_” - -Sharing the nature of the Unchangeable, we share the Eternal Reality. In -the highest sense, man also is divine:-- - - “_The Mind becomes Buddha: the Mind itself is Buddha._”[41] - - “_In the Engaku-Kyō[42] it is written: ‘Now for the first - time I perceive that all living beings have the original - Buddha-nature,--wherefore Birth and Death and Nirvana have become - for me as a dream of the night that is gone.’_” - -Yet what of the Buddhas who successively melt into Nirvana, and -nevertheless “return in their order”? Are they, too, phantoms?--is -their individuality also unreal? Probably the question admits of many -different answers,--since there is a Buddhist Realism as well as a -Buddhist Idealism; but, for present purposes, the following famous text -is a sufficient reply:-- - - NAMU ITSU SHIN SAN-ZÉ SHŌ BUTSU! - - “_Hail to all the Buddhas of the Three Existences,[43] who are - but one in the One Mind!_”[44] - -In relation to the Absolute, no difference exists even between gods and -men:-- - - “_The Golden Verse of the Jō-sho-sa-chi[45] says:--‘This - doctrine is equal and alike for all; there is neither superior nor - inferior, neither above nor below.’_” - -Nay, according to a still more celebrated text, there is not even any -difference of personality:-- - - JI TA HŌ KAI BYŌ DŌ RI YAKU. - - “_The ‘I’ and the ‘Not-I’ are not different in the World of Law: - both are favored alike._”[46] - -And a still more wonderful text--(to my thinking, the most remarkable of -all Buddhist texts)--declares that the world itself, phantom though it -be, is yet not different from Mind:-- - - SŌ MOKU KOKU DŌ SHITSU KAI JŌ BUTSU. - - “_Grass, trees, countries, the earth itself,--all these shall - enter wholly into Buddhahood._”[47] - -Literally, “shall become Buddha;” that is, they shall enter into -Buddhahood or Nirvana. All that we term matter will be transmuted -therefore into Mind,--Mind with the attributes of Infinite Sentiency, -Infinite Vision, and Infinite Knowledge. As phenomenon, matter is -unreal; but transcendentally it belongs by its ultimate nature to the -Sole Reality. - -Such a philosophical position is likely to puzzle the average reader. To -call matter and mind but two aspects of the Ultimate Reality will not -seem irrational to students of Herbert Spencer. But to say that matter -is a phenomenon, an illusion, a dream, explains nothing;--as phenomenon -it exists, and having a destiny attributed to it, must be considered -objectively. Equally unsatisfying is the statement that phenomena -are aggregates of Karma. What is the nature of the particles of the -aggregate? Or, in plainest language, what is the illusion made of? - -Not in the original Buddhist scriptures, and still less in the -literature of Buddhist cemeteries, need the reply be sought. Such -questions are dealt with in the sastras rather than in the sûtras;--also -in various Japanese commentaries upon both. A friend has furnished me -with some very curious and unfamiliar Shingon texts containing answers -to the enigma. - -The Shingon sect, I may observe, is a mystical sect, which especially -proclaims the identity of mind and substance, and boldly carries out the -doctrine to its furthest logical consequences. Its founder and father -Kū-kai, better known as Kōbōdaishi, declared in his book _Hizōki_ that -matter is not different in essence from spirit. “As to the doctrine -of grass, trees, and things non-sentient becoming Buddhas” he writes, -“I say that the refined forms [_ultimate nature_] of spiritual bodies -consist of the Five Great Elements; that Ether[48] consists of the Five -Great Elements; and that the refined forms of bodies spiritual, of -ether, of plants, of trees, consequently pervade all space. This ether, -these plants and trees, are themselves spiritual bodies. To the eye of -flesh, plants and trees appear to be gross matter. But to the eye of -the Buddha _they are composed of minute spiritual entities_. Therefore, -even without any change in their substance, there can be no error or -impropriety in our calling them Buddhas.” - -The use of the term “non-sentient” in the foregoing would seem to -involve a contradiction; but this is explained away by a dialogue in the -book _Shi-man-gi_:-- - - Q.--Are not grass and trees sometimes called sentient? - - A.--They can be so called. - - Q.--But they have also been called non-sentient: how can they be - called sentient? - - A.--In all substance from the beginning exists the impress of - the wisdom-nature of the Nyōrai (_Tathâgata_): therefore to call - such things sentient is not error. - - * * * * * - -“Potentially sentient,” the reader might conclude; but this conclusion -would be wrong. The Shingon thought is not of a potential sentiency, -but of a latent sentiency which although to us non-apparent and -non-imaginable, is nevertheless both real and actual. Commenting upon -the words of Kōbōdaishi above cited, the great priest Yū-kai not only -reiterates the opinion of his master, but asserts that it is absurd -to deny that plants, trees, and what we call inanimate objects, can -practise virtue! “Since Mind,” he declares, “pervades the whole World -of Law, the grasses, plants, trees, and earth pervaded by it must all -have mind, and must turn their mind to Buddhahood and practise virtue. -Do not doubt the doctrine of our sect, regarding the Non-Duality of the -Pervading and the Pervaded, merely because of the distinction made in -common parlance between Matter and Mind.” As for _how_ plants or stones -can practise virtue, the sûtras indeed have nothing to say. But that is -because the sûtras, being intended for man, teach only what man should -know and do. - -The reader will now, perhaps, be better able to follow out the really -startling Buddhist hypothesis of the nature of matter to its more than -startling conclusion. (It must not be contemned because of the fantasy -of five elements; for these are declared to be only modes of one -ultimate.) All forms of what we call matter are really but aggregates -of spiritual units; and all apparent differences of substance represent -only differences of combination among these units. The differences -of combination are caused by special tendencies and affinities of -the units;--the tendency of each being the necessary result of its -particular evolutional history--(using the term “evolutional” in a -purely ethical sense). All integrations of apparent substance,--the -million suns and planets of the universe,--represent only the affinities -of such ghostly ultimates; and every human act or thought registers -itself through enormous time by some knitting or loosening of forces -working for good or evil. - - * * * * * - -Grass, trees, earth, and all things seem to us what they are not, simply -because the eye of flesh is blind. Life itself is a curtain hiding -reality,--somewhat as the vast veil of day conceals from our sight the -countless orbs of Space. But the texts of the cemeteries proclaim that -the purified mind, even while prisoned within the body, may enter for -moments of ecstasy into union with the Supreme:-- - - “_The One Bright Moon illuminates the mind in the meditation - called Zenjō._”[49] - -The “One Bright Moon” is the Supreme Buddha. By the pure of heart He may -even be seen:-- - - “_Hail unto the Wondrous Law! By attaining to the state of - single-mindedness we behold the Buddha._”[50] - -Greater delight there is none:-- - - “_Incomparable the face of the Nyōrai,--surpassing all beauty in - this world!_”[51] - -But to see the face of one Buddha is to see all:-- - - “_The Dai-en-kyō-chi-kyō[52] says:--‘By entering deeply into the - meditation Zenjō, one may see all the Buddhas of the Ten Directions - of Space.’_” - - “_The Golden Mouth has said:--‘He whose mind can discern - the being of one Buddha, may easily behold three, four, five - Buddhas,--nay, all the Buddhas of the Three Existences.’_”[53] - -Which mystery is thus explained:-- - - “_The Myō-kwan-satsu-chi-kyō[54] has said:--‘The mind that detaches - itself from all things becomes the very mind of Buddha.’_”[55] - -Visitors to the older Buddhist temples of Japan can scarcely fail to -notice the remarkable character of the gilded aureoles attached to -certain images. These aureoles, representing circles, disks, or ovals -of glory, contain numbers of little niches shaped like archings or -whirls of fire, each enshrining a Buddha or a Bodhisattva. A verse of -the Amitâyur-Dhyâna Sûtra might have suggested this symbolism to the -Japanese sculptors:--“_In the halo of that Buddha there are Buddhas -innumerable as the sands of the Ganga._”[56] Icon and verse alike -express that doctrine of the One in Many suggested by the foregoing -sotoba-texts; and the assurance that he who sees one Buddha can see all, -may further be accepted as signifying that he who perceives one great -truth fully, will be able to perceive countless truths. - -But even to the spiritually blind the light must come at last. A host -of cemetery texts proclaim the Infinite Love that watches all, and the -certainty of ultimate and universal salvation:-- - - “_Possessing all the Virtues and all the Powers, the Eyes of the - Infinite Compassion behold all living creatures._”[57] - - “_The Kongō-takara-tō-mei[58] proclaims:--‘All living beings in - the Six States of Existence[59] shall be delivered from the bonds of - attachment; their minds and their bodies alike shall be freed from - desire; and they shall obtain the Supreme Enlightenment.’_” - - “_The Sûtra says:--‘Changing the hearts of all beings, I cause - them to enter upon the Way of Buddhahood.’_”[60] - -Yet the supreme conquest can be achieved only by self-effort:-- - - “_Through the destruction of the Three Poisons[61] one may rise - above the Three States of Existence._” - -The Three Existences signify time past, present, and future. To rise -above--(more literally, to “emerge from”)--the Three Existences means -therefore to pass beyond Space and Time,--to become one with the -Infinite. The conquest of Time is indeed possible only for a Buddha; but -all shall become Buddhas. Even a woman, while yet a woman, may reach -Buddhahood, as this Nichiren text bears witness, inscribed above the -grave of a girl:-- - - KAI YO KEN PI RYŌ-NYŌ JŌ BUTSU. - - - “_All beheld from afar the Dragon Maiden become a Buddha._” - -The reference is to the beautiful legend of Sâgara, the daughter of the -Nâga-king, in the _Myō-hō-rengé-kyō_.[62] - - -IV - -Though not representing, nor even suggesting, the whole range of -sotoba-literature, the foregoing texts will sufficiently indicate the -quality of its philosophical interest. The inscriptions of the _haka_, -or tombs, have another kind of interest; but before treating of these, -a few words should be said about the tombs themselves. I cannot attempt -detail, because any description of the various styles of such monuments -would require a large and profusely illustrated volume; while the -study of their sculptures belongs to the enormous subject of Buddhist -iconography,--foreign to the purpose of this essay. - -There are hundreds,--probably thousands,--of different forms of -Buddhist funeral monuments,--ranging from the unhewn boulder, with a -few ideographs scratched on it, of the poorest village-graveyard, to -the complicated turret (_kagé-kio_) enclosing a shrine with images, and -surmounted with a spire of umbrella-shaped disks or parasols (Sanscrit: -_tchâtras_),--possibly representing the old Chinese stûpa. The most -common class of _haka_ are plain. A large number of the better class -have lotos-designs chiselled upon some part of them:--either the -pedestal is sculptured so as to represent lotos-petals; or a single -blossom is cut in relief or intaglio on the face of the tablet; or--(but -this is rare)--a whole lotos-plant, leaves and flowers, is designed -in relief upon one or two sides of the monument. In the costly class -of tombs symbolizing the Five Buddhist Elements, the eight-petalled -lotos-symbol may be found repeated, with decorative variations, upon -three or four portions of their elaborate structure. Occasionally -we find beautiful reliefs upon tombstones,--images of Buddhas or -Bodhisattvas; and not unfrequently a statue of Jizō may be seen erected -beside a grave. But the sculptures of this class are mostly old;--the -finest pieces in the Kobudera cemetery, for example, were executed -between two and three hundred years ago. Finally I may observe that the -family crest or _mon_ of the dead is cut upon the front of the tomb, and -sometimes also upon the little stone tank set before it. - - * * * * * - -The inscriptions very seldom include any texts from the holy books. On -the front of the monument, below the chiselled crest, the kaimyō is -graven, together, perhaps, with a single mystical character--Sanscrit -or Chinese; on the left side is usually placed the record of the date -of death; and on the right, the name of the person or family erecting -the tomb. Such is now, at least, the ordinary arrangement; but there -are numerous exceptions; and as the characters are most often disposed -in vertical columns, it is quite easy to put all the inscriptions upon -the face of a very narrow monument. Occasionally the real name is also -cut upon some part of the stone,--together, perhaps, with some brief -record of the memorable actions of the dead. Excepting the kaimyō, and -the sect-invocation often accompanying it, the inscriptions upon the -ordinary class of tombs are secular in character; and the real interest -of such epigraphy is limited to the kaimyō. By _kai_-myō (_sîla_-name) -is meant the Buddhist name given to the spirit of the dead, according -to the custom of all sects except the Ikkō or Shinshū. In a special -sense the term _kai_, or sîla, refers to precepts of conduct[63]; in a -general sense it might be rendered as “salvation by works.” But the -Shinshū allows no _kai_ to any mortal; it does not admit the doctrine -of immediate salvation by works, but only by faith in Amida; and the -posthumous appellations which it bestows are therefore called not -_kai_-myō, but _hō-myō_, or “Law-names.” - -Before Meiji the social rank occupied by any one during life -was suggested by the kaimyō. The use, with a kaimyō, of the two -characters reading _in den_, and signifying “temple-dweller,” -or “mansion-dweller,”--or of the more common single character -_in_, signifying “temple” or “mansion,” was a privilege reserved -to the nobility and gentry. Class-distinctions were further -indicated by suffixes. _Koji_,--a term partly corresponding to our -“lay-brother,”--and _Daishi_, “great elder-sister,” were honorifically -attached to the kaimyō of the samurai and the aristocracy; while the -simpler appellations of _Shinshi_ and _Shinnyo_, respectively signifying -“faithful [believing] man,” “faithful woman,” followed the kaimyō of -the humble. These forms are still used; but the distinctions they once -maintained have mostly passed away, and the privilege of the knightly -“_in den_,” and its accompaniments, is free to any one willing to pay -for it. At all times the words _Dōji_ and _Dōnyo_ seem to have been -attached to the kaimyō of children. _Dō_, alone, means a lad, but -when combined with _ji_ or _nyo_ it means “child” in the adjectival -sense;--so that we may render _Dōji_ as “Child-son,” and _Dōnyo_ as -“Child-daughter.” Children are thus called who die before reaching -their fifteenth year,--the majority-year by the old samurai code; a lad -of fifteen being deemed fit for war-service. In the case of children -who die within a year after birth, the terms _Gaini_ and _Gainyo_ -occasionally replace _Dōji_ and _Dōnyo_. The syllable _Gai_ here -represents a Chinese character meaning “suckling.” - -Different Buddhists sects have different formulas for the composition -of the kaimyō and its addenda;--but this subject would require a whole -special treatise; and I shall mention only a few sectarian customs. -The Shingon sect sometimes put a Sanscrit character--the symbol -of a Buddha--before their kaimyō;--the Shin head theirs with an -abbreviation of the holy name Sakyamuni;--the Nichiren often preface -their inscriptions with the famous invocation, _Namu myō hō rengé kyō_ -(“Hail to the Sutra of the Lotos of the Good Law!”),--sometimes followed -by the words _Senzo daidai_ (“forefathers of the generations”);--the -Jōdo, like the Ikkō, use an abbreviation of the name Sakyamuni, or, -occasionally, the invocation _Namu Amida Butsu!_--and they compose their -four-character kaimyō with the aid of two ideographs signifying “honour” -or “fame;”--the Zen sect contrive that the first and the last character -of the kaimyō, when read together, shall form a particular Buddhist -term, or mystical phrase,--except when the kaimyō consists of only two -characters. - -Probably the word “mansion” in kaimyō-inscriptions would suggest to -most Western readers the idea of heavenly mansions. But the fancy would -be at fault. The word has no celestial signification; yet the history -of its epitaphic use is curious enough. Anciently, at the death of any -illustrious man, a temple was erected for the special services due to -his spirit, and also for the conservation of relics or memorials of him. -Confucianism introduced into Japan the _ihai_, or mortuary tablet, -called by the Chinese _shin-shu_;[64] and a portion of the temple was -set apart to serve as a chapel for the _ihai_, and the ancestral cult. -Any such memorial temple was called _in_, or “mansion,”--doubtless -because the august spirit was believed to occupy it at certain -periods;--and the term yet survives in the names of many celebrated -Buddhist temples,--such as the Chion-In, of Kyōtō. With the passing -of time, this custom was necessarily modified; for as privileges were -extended and aristocracies multiplied, the erection of a separate temple -to each notable presently became impossible. Buddhism met the difficulty -by conferring upon every individual of distinction the posthumous title -of _in-den_,--and affixing to this title the name of an imaginary -temple or “mansion.” So to-day, in the vast majority of kaimyō, the -character _in_ refers only to the temple that would have been built had -circumstance permitted, but now exists only in the pious desire of those -who love and reverence the departed. - -[Illustration: TOMB IN KOBUDERA CEMETERY - -(The relief represents Seishi Bosatsu--Bodhisattva Mahâsthâma--in -meditation. It is 187 years old. The white patches on the surface are -lichen growths)] - -Nevertheless the poetry of these _in_-names does possess some -real meaning. They are nearly all of them names such as would be -given to real Buddhist temples,--names of virtues and sanctities and -meditations,--names of ecstasies and powers and splendors and luminous -immeasurable unfoldings,--names of all ways and means of escape from the -Six States of Existence and the sorrow of “peopling the cemeteries again -and again.” - - * * * * * - -The general character and arrangement of kaimyō can best be understood -by the aid of a few typical specimens. The first example is from a -beautiful tomb in the cemetery of Kobudera, which is sculptured with -a relief representing the Bodhisattva Mahâsthâma (Seishi Bosatsu) -meditating. All the text in this instance has been cut upon the face of -the monument, to left and right of the icon. Transliterated into Romaji -it reads thus:-- - - (Kaimyō.) - - _Tei-Shō-In_, HŌ-SŌ MYŌ-SHIN, _Daishi_. - - (Record.) - - --Shōtoku Ni, Jin shin Shimotsuki, jiu-ku nichi. - - [Translation:-- - - --_Great Elder-Sister_, - WONDERFUL-REALITY-APPEARING-AT-THE-WINDOW-OF-LAW, _dwelling in the - Mansion of the Pine of Chastity_. - - --The nineteenth day of the Month of Frost,[65] second year of - Shōtoku,[66]--the year being under the Dragon of Elder Water.] - -For the sake of clearness, I have printed the posthumous name proper -(_Hō-sō Myō-shin_) in small capitals, and the rest in italics. The -first three characters of the inscription,--_Tei-Shō-In_,--form the -name of the temple, or “mansion.” The pine, both in religious and -secular poetry, is a symbol of changeless conditions of good, because -it remains freshly-green in all seasons. The use of the term “Reality” -in the kaimyō indicates the state of unity with the Absolute;--by -“Window-of-Law” (Law here signifying the Buddha-state) must be -understood that exercise of virtue through which even in this existence -some perception of Infinite Truth may be obtained. I have already -explained the final word, _Daishi_ (“great elder-sister”). - -Less mystical, but not less beautiful, is this Nichiren kaimyō -sculptured upon the grave of a young samurai: - - _Ko-shin In, Ken-dō Nichi-ki, Koji._ - - [_Koji,-- - - Bright-Sun-on-the-Way-of-the-Wise, in the Mansion of Luminous - Mind._][67] - -On the same stone is carven the kaimyō of the wife:-- - - _Shin-kyō In, Myō-en Nichi-ko, Daishi._ - - [_Daishi,-- - - Spherically-Wondrous-Sunbeam, in the Mansion of the Mirror of - the Heart._] - -Perhaps the reader will now be able to find interest in the following -selection of kaimyō, translated for me by Japanese scholars. The -inscriptions are of various rites and epochs; but I have arranged them -only by class and sex:-- - - - [MASCULINE KAIMYŌ.] - - _Koji,-- - - Law-Nature-Eternally-Complete, in the Mansion of the Mirror of - Light._ - - _Koji,-- - - Lone-Moon-above-Snowy-Peak, in the Mansion of Quiet Light._ - - _Koji,-- - - Wonderful-Radiance-of-Luminous-Sound, in the Mansion of the - Day-dawn of Mind._ - - _Koji,-- - - Pure-Lotos-bloom-of-the-Heart, in the Mansion of Shining - Beginnings._ - - _Koji,-- - - Real-Earnestness-Self-sufficing-within, in the Mansion of - Mystery-Penetration._ - - _Koji,-- - - Wonderful-Brightness-of-the-Clouds-of-Law, in the Mansion of - Wisdom-Illumination._ - - _Koji,-- - - Law-Echo-proclaiming-Truth, in the Mansion of Real Zeal._ - - _Koji,-- - - Ocean-of-Reason-Calmly-Full, in the Mansion of Self-Nature._ - - _Koji,-- - - Effective-Benevolence-Hearing-with-Pure-Heart-the-Supplications-of- - the-Poor,--dwelling - in the Mansion of the Virtue of Pity._ - - _Koji,-- - - Perfect-Enlightenment-beaming-tranquil-Glory,--in the Mansion of - Supreme Comprehension._ - - _Koji,-- - - Autumnal-Prospect-Clear-of-Cloud,--of the Household of - Sakyamuni,--in the Mansion of the Obedient Heart._ - - _Koji,-- - - Illustrious-Brightness,--of the Household of the Buddha,--in the - Mansion of Conspicuous Virtue._ - - _Koji,-- - - Daily-Peace-Home-Prospering, in the Mansion of Spherical - Completeness._ - - * * * * * - - _Shinshi,-- - - Prosperity-wide-shining-as-the-Moon-of-Autumn._ - - _Shinshi,-- - - Vow-abiding-wondrously-without-fault._ - - _Shinshi,-- - - Vernal-Mountain-bathed-in-the-Light-of-the-Law._ - - _Shinshi,-- - - Waking-to-Dhyâna-at-the-Bell-Peal-of-the-Wondrous-Dawn._ - - _Shinshi,-- - - Winter-Mountain-Chastity-Mind._[68] - - [FEMININE KAIMYŌ] - - _Daishi,-- - - Moon-Dawn-of-the-Mountain-of-Light, dwelling in the August - Mansion of Self-witness._[69] - - _Daishi,-- - - Wondrous-Lotos-of-Fleckless-Light, in the Mansion of the - Moonlike Heart._ - - _Daishi,-- - - Wonderful-Chastity-Responding-with-Pure-Mind-to-the-Summons-of- - Duty,--in - the Mansion of the Great Sea of Compassion._ - - _Daishi,-- - - Lotos-Heart-of-Wondrous-Apparition,--in the Mansion of Luminous - Perfume._ - - _Daishi,-- - - Clear-Light-of-the-Spotless-Moon, in the Mansion of - Spring-time-Eve._ - - _Kaishi,-- - - Pure-Mind-as-a-Sun-of-Compassion, in the Mansion of Real Light._ - - _Daishi,-- - - Wondrous-Lotos-of-Fragrance-Etherial, in the Mansion of - Law-Nature._ - - _Shinnyo,-- - - Rejoicing-in-the-Way-of-the-Infinite._ - - _Shinnyo,-- - - Excellent-Courage-to-follow-Wisdom-to-the-End._ - - _Shinnyo,-- - - Winter-Moon-shedding-purest-Light._ - - _Shinnyo,-- - - Luminous-Shadow-in-the-Plumflower-Chamber._ - - _Shinnyo,-- - - Virtue-fragrant-as-the-Odor-of-the-Lotos._ - - -[CHILDREN’S KAIMYŌ.--MALE.] - - _Dai-Dōji,[70]-- - - Instantly-Attaining-to-the-Perfect-Peace, dwelling in the August - Mansion of Purity._ - - _Dai-Dōji,[71]-- - - Permeating-Lucidity-of-the-Pure-Grove, dwelling in the August - Mansion of Blossom-Fragrance._ - - _Gaini,-- - - Frost-Glimmer._ - - _Dōji,-- - - Dewy-Light._ - - _Dōji,-- - - Dream-of-Spring._ - - _Dōji,-- - - Spring-Frost._ - - _Dōji,-- - - Ethereal-Nature._ - - _Dōji,-- - - Rain-of-the-Law-from-translucent-Clouds._ - - [CHILDREN’S KAIMYŌ.--FEMALE.] - - _Dai-Dōnyo,[72]-- - - Bright-Shining-Height-of-Wisdom, dwelling in the August Mansion - of Fragrant Trees._ - - _Gainyo,-- - - Snowy-Bubble._ - - _Gainyo,-- - - Shining-Phantasm._ - - _Dōnyo,-- - - Plumflower-Light._ - - _Dōnyo,-- - - Dream-Phantasm._ - - _Dōnyo,-- - - Chaste-Spring._ - - _Dōnyo,-- - - Wisdom-Mirror-of-Flawless-Appearing._ - - _Dōnyo,-- - - Wondrous-Excellence-of-Fragrant-Snow._ - -After having studied the sotoba-texts previously cited, the reader -should be able to divine the meaning of most of the kaimyō above given. -At all events he will understand such frequently-repeated terms as -“Moon,” “Lotos,” “Law.” But he may be puzzled by other expressions; and -some further explanation will, perhaps, not be unwelcome. - -Besides expressing a pious hope for the higher happiness of the -departed, or uttering some assurance of special conditions in the -spiritual world, a great number of kaimyō also refer, directly or -indirectly, to the character of the vanished personality. Thus a man of -widely-recognized integrity and strong moral purpose, may--like my dead -friend--be not unfitly named: “Bright-Sun-on-the-Way-of-the-Wise.” The -child-daughter or the young wife, especially remembered for sweetness -of character, may be commemorated by some such posthumous name as -“Plumflower-Light,” or “Luminous-Shadow-of-the-Plumflower-Chamber;”--the -word “plumflower” in either case at once suggesting the quality -of the virtue of the dead, because this blossom in Japan is the -emblem of feminine moral charm,--more particularly faithfulness -to duty and faultless modesty. Again, the memory of any person -noted for deeds of charity may be honoured by such a kaimyō as, -“Effective-Benevolence-Listening-with-Pure-Heart-to-the-Supplications- -of-the-Poor.” Finally I may observe that the kaimyō-terms expressing -altitude, luminosity, and fragrance, have most often a moral-exemplary -signification. But in all countries epitaphic literature has its -conventional hypocrisies or extravagances. Buddhist kaimyō frequently -contain a great deal of religious flattery; and beautiful posthumous -names are often given to those whose lives were the reverse of -beautiful. - -When we find among feminine kaimyō such appellations as -“Wondrous-Lotos,” or “Beautiful-as-the-Lotos-of-the-Dawn,” we may be -sure in the generality of cases that the charm, to which reference -is so made, was ethical only. Yet there are exceptions; and the more -remarkable of these are furnished by the kaimyō of children. Names like -“Dream-of-Spring,” “Radiant-Phantasm,” “Snowy-Bubble,” do actually refer -to the lost form,--or at least to the supposed parental idea of vanished -beauty and grace. But such names also exemplify a peculiar consolatory -application of the Buddhist doctrine of Impermanency. We might say that -through the medium of these kaimyō the bereaved are thus soothed in the -loftiest language of faith:--“Beautiful and brief was the being of your -child,--a dream of spring, a radiant passing vision,--a snowy bubble. -But in the order of eternal law all forms must pass; material permanency -there is none: only the divine Absolute dwelling in every being,--only -the Buddha in the heart of each of us,--forever endures. Be this great -truth at once your comfort and your hope!” - - * * * * * - -Extraordinary examples of the retrospective significance sometimes -given to posthumous names, are furnished by the kaimyō of the -Forty-Seven Rōnin buried at Sengakuji in Tōkyō. (Their story is -now well-known to all the English-reading world through Mitford’s -eloquent and sympathetic version of it in the “Tales of Old -Japan.”) The noteworthy peculiarity of these kaimyō is that each -contains the two words, “dagger” and “sword,”--used in a symbolic -sense, but having also an appropriate military suggestiveness. -Ōïshi Kuranosuké Yoshiwo, the leader, is alone styled _Koji_;--the -kaimyō of his followers have the humbler suffix _Shinshi_. Ōïshi’s -kaimyō reads:--“_Dagger-of-Emptiness-and-stainless-Sword, in the -Mansion of Earnest Loyalty_.” I need scarcely call attention to -the historic meaning of the mansion-name. Three of the kaimyō -of his followers will serve as examples of the rest. That of -Masé Kyudayu Masaake is:--“_Dagger-of-Fame-and-Sword-of-the-Way -[or Doctrine.]_” The kaimyō of Ōïshi Sezayémon Nobukiyo -is:--“_Dagger-of-Magnanimity-and-Sword-of-Virtue._” And the kaimyō of -Horibei Yasubei is:--“_Dagger-of-Cloud-and-Sword-of-Brightness._” - -The first and the last of these four kaimyō will be found obscure; and -several more of the forty-seven inscriptions are equally enigmatic -at first sight. Usually in a kaimyō the word “Emptiness,” or “Void,” -signifies the Buddhist state of absolute spiritual purity,--the state of -Unconditioned Being. But in the kaimyō of Ōïshi Kuranosuké the meaning -of it, though purely Buddhist, is very different. By “emptiness” here, -we must understand “illusion,” “unreality,”--and the full meaning of -the phrase “dagger-emptiness” is:--“_Wisdom that, seeing the emptiness -of material forms, pierces through illusion as a dagger._” In Horibei -Yasubei’s kaimyō we must similarly render the word “cloud” by illusion; -and “Dagger-of-Cloud” should be interpreted, “_Illusion-penetrating -Dagger of Wisdom._” The wisdom that perceives the emptiness of -phenomena, is the sharply-dividing, or distinguishing wisdom,--is -_Myō-kwan-zatsu-chi_ (Pratyavekshana-gñâna). - - -V - -Possibly I have presumed too much upon the patience of my readers; yet -I feel that these studies can yield scarcely more than the glimpse of -a subject wide and deep as a sea. If they should arouse any Western -interest in the philosophy and the poetry of Buddhist epitaphic -literature, then they will certainly have accomplished all that I could -reasonably hope. - -Not improbably I shall be accused, as I have been on other occasions, -of trying to make Buddhist texts “more beautiful than they are.” This -charge usually comes from persons totally ignorant of the originals, -and betrays a spirit of disingenuousness with which I have no sympathy. -Whoever confesses religion to have been a developing influence in the -social and moral history of races,--whoever grants that respect is due -to convictions which have shaped the nobler courses of human conduct -for thousands of years,--whoever acknowledges that in any great religion -something of eternal truth must exist,--will hold it the highest -duty of a translator to interpret the concepts of an alien faith as -generously as he would wish his own thoughts or words interpreted by his -fellow-men. In the rendering of Chinese sentences this duty presents -itself under a peculiar aspect. Any attempt at literal translation would -result in the production either of nonsense, or of a succession of ideas -totally foreign to far-Eastern thought. The paramount necessity in -treating such texts is to discover and to expound the thought conveyed -to Oriental minds by the original ideographs,--which are very different -things indeed from “written words.” The translations given in this essay -were made by Japanese scholars, and, in their present form, have the -approval of competent critics. - - * * * * * - -As I write these lines a full moon looks into my study over the trees of -the temple-garden, and brings me the recollection of a little Buddhist -poem:-- - -“_From the foot of the mountain, many are the paths ascending in shadow; -but from the cloudless summit all who climb behold the self-same Moon._” - - * * * * * - -The reader who knows the truth shrined in this little verse will not -regret an hour passed with me among the tombs of Kobudera. - -FOOTNOTES: - -[16] Such figures are really elaborate tiles, and are called -_onigawara_, or “demon-tiles.” It may naturally be asked why -demon-heads should be ever placed above Buddhist gate-ways. Originally -they were not intended to represent demons, in the Buddhist sense, -but guardian-spirits whose duty it was to drive demons away. The -_onigawara_ were introduced into Japan either from China or Korea--not -improbably Korea; for we read that the first roof-tiles made in Japan -were manufactured shortly after the introduction of the new faith -by Korean priests, and under the supervision of Shōtoku Taishi, the -princely founder and supporter of Japanese Buddhism. They were baked at -Koizumi-mura, in Yamato;--but we are not told whether there were any of -this extraordinary shape among them. It is worth while remarking that in -Korea to-day you can see hideous faces painted upon house-doors,--even -upon the gates of the royal palace; and these, intended merely to -frighten away evil spirits, suggest the real origin of the demon-tiles. -The Japanese, on first seeing such tiles, called them demon-tiles -because the faces upon them resembled those conventionally given to -Buddhist demons; and now that their history has been forgotten, they are -popularly supposed to represent demon-guardians. There would be nothing -contrary to Buddhist faith in the fancy;--for there are many legends of -good demons. Besides, in the eternal order of divine law, even the worst -demon must at last become a Buddha. - -[17] _Osmanthus fragrans._ This is one of the very few Japanese plants -having richly-perfumed flowers. - -[18] The word “sotoba” is identical with the Sanscrit “stûpa.” -Originally a mausoleum, and later a simple monument--commemorative or -otherwise,--the stûpa was introduced with Buddhism into China, and -thence, perhaps by way of Korea, into Japan. Chinese forms of the stone -stûpa are to be found in many of the old Japanese temple-grounds. The -wooden _sotoba_ is only a symbol of the stûpa; and the more elaborate -forms of it plainly suggest its history. The slight carving along its -upper edges represents that superimposition of cube, sphere, crescent, -pyramid, and body-pyriform (symbolizing the Five Great Elements), which -forms the design of the most beautiful funeral monuments. - -[19] These relations of the elements to the Buddhas named are not, -however, permanently fixed in the doctrine,--for obvious philosophical -reasons. Sometimes Sakyamuni is identified with Ether, and Amitâbha with -Air, etc., etc. In the above enumeration I have followed the order taken -by Professor Bunyiu Nanjio, who nevertheless suggests that this order is -not to be considered perpetual. - -[20] The above prayer is customarily said after having read a sûtra, or -copied a sacred text, or caused a Buddhist service to be performed. - -[21] Dai-en-kyō-chi (Âdarsana-gñâna). Amida is the Japanese form of the -name Amitâbha. - -[22] “Great (or Noble) Elder Sister” is the meaning of the title -_dai-shi_ affixed to the _kaimyō_ of a woman. In the rite of the Zen -sect _dai-shi_ always signifies a married woman; _shin-nyo_, a maid. - -[23] This _kaimyō_, or posthumous name, literally signifies: -Radiant-Chastity-Beaming-Through-Luminous-Clouds. - -[24] The Supreme Wisdom; the state of Buddhahood. - -[25] _San-Akudō_,--the three unhappy conditions of Hell, of the World of -Hungry Spirits (_Pretas_), and of Animal Existence. - -[26] “Haijō Kongō” means “the Diamond of Universal Enlightenment:” it -is the honorific appellation of Kūkai or Kobodaishi, founder of the -Shingon-Shū. - -[27] From a Zen sotoba. - -[28] In Japanese “Sanbodai.” The term “tower” refers of course to the -_sotoba_, the symbol of a real tower, or at least of the desire to erect -such a monument, were it possible. - -[29] In Japanese, _Anuka-tara-sanmaku-sanbodai_,--the supreme form of -Buddhist enlightenment. - -[30] From a sotoba of the Jodo sect. - -[31] From a sotoba of the Jōdo sect. The Amida-Kyō, or Sûtra of Amida, -is the Japanese [Chinese] version of the smaller Sukhâvatî-Vyûha Sûtra. - -[32] _Gokuraku_ is the common word in Japan for the Buddhist heaven. The -above inscription, translated for me from a sotoba of the Jōdo sect, -is an abbreviated form of a verse in the Smaller Sukhâvatî-Vyûha (see -_Buddhist Mahâyâna Texts_: “Sacred Books of the East”), which Max Müller -has thus rendered in full:--“In that world Sukhâvatî, O Sâriputra, there -is neither bodily nor mental pain for living beings. The sources of -happiness are innumerable there. For that reason is that world called -Sukhâvatî, the happy.” - -[33] From a sotoba of the Jōdo sect. - -[34] Sotoba of the Jōdo sect. - -[35] Sotoba of the Jōdo sect. - -[36] Sotoba of the Zen sect. - -[37] Sotoba of the Zen sect. - -[38] Tathâgata. - -[39] From a sotoba of the Zen sect. - -[40] Avatamsaka Sûtra.--This text is also from a Zen sotoba. - -[41] From a tombstone of the Jōdo sect. The text is evidently from the -Chinese version of the Amitâyur-Dhyâna-Sûtra (see _Buddhist Mahâyâna -Texts_: “Sacred Books of the East”). It reads in the English version -thus:--“In fine, it is your mind that becomes Buddha;--nay, it is your -mind that is indeed Buddha.” - -[42] Pratyeka-Buddha sastra?--From a sotoba of the Zen sect. - -[43] _San-zé_, or _mitsu-yo_,--the Past, Present, and Future. - -[44] “Mind” is here expressed by the character _shin_ or _kokoro_.--The -text is from a Zen sotoba, but is used also, I am told, by the mystical -sects of Tendai and Shingon. - -[45] Krityânushthâna-gñâna.--The text is from a sotoba of the Shingon -sect. - -[46] More literally, “Self and Other:” i. e., the Ego and the Non-Ego -in the meaning of “I” and “Thou.” There is no “I” and “Thou” in -Buddhahood.--This text was copied from a Zen sotoba. - -[47] From a Zen sotoba. - -[48] The Chinese word literally means “void,”--as in the expression -“Void Supreme,” to signify the state of Nirvana. But the philosophical -reference here is to the ultimate substance, or primary matter; and the -rendering of the term by “Ether” (rather in the Greek than the modern -sense, of course) has the sanction of Bunyiu Nanjio, and the approval of -other eminent Sanscrit and Chinese scholars. - -[49] Literally, “illuminates the Zenjō-mind.” Zenjō is the Sanscrit -_Dhyâna_. It is believed that in real _Dhyâna_ the mind can hold -communication with the Absolute.--From a sotoba of the Zen sect. - -[50] From a sotoba of the Tendai sect. - -[51] From a Jōdo sotoba. - -[52] Literally, “the Great-Round-Mirror-Wisdom-Sûtra.” Sansc., -_Adarsana-gñâna_.--From a Zen sotoba. - -[53] Sotoba of the Zen sect. - -[54] _Pratyavekshana-gñâna._ - -[55] From a Zen sotoba. - -[56] _Buddhist Mahâyâna Texts_: “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. xlix. -p. 180. - -[57] From a sotoba of the Zen sect. - -[58] Lit.: “the Inscription of the Tower of Diamond,”--name of a -Buddhist text. - -[59] The Six States of Existence are Heaven, Man, Demons, Hell, Hungry -Spirits (_Pretas_), and Animals.--The above is from a Zen sotoba. - -[60] Sotoba of the Nichiren sect. - -[61] _San-doku_ or _Mitsu-no-doku_, viz.:--Anger, Ignorance, and -Desire.--From a Zen sotoba. - -[62] Japanese title of the Saddhârma-Pundarika Sûtra. See, for legend, -chap. xi. of Kern’s translation in the _Sacred Books of the East_ -series. - -[63] There is a great variety of _sîla_;--five, eight, and ten for -different classes of laity; two hundred and fifty for priests;--five -hundred for nuns, etc., etc.--Be it here observed that the posthumous -Buddhist name given to the dead must not be studied as referring always -to conduct in this world, but rather as referring to _sîla_ in another -world. The _kaimyō_ is thus a title of spiritual initiation.--Some -Japanese Buddhist sects hold what are called _Ju-Kai-E_ (“_sîla_-giving -assemblies”), at which the initiated are given _kaimyō_ of another -sort,--_sîla_-names of admission as neophytes. - -[64] That is, according to the Japanese reading of the Chinese -characters. - -[65] By the old calendar, the eleventh month was the Month of Frost. - -[66] The second year of the period Shōtoku corresponds to 1712 -A.D.--(For the meaning of the phrase “Dragon of Elder Water” the reader -will do well to consult Professor Rein’s _Japan_, pp. 434-436.) - -[67] This beautiful kaimyō is identical with that placed upon the -monument of my dear friend Nishida, buried in the Nichiren cemetery of -Chōmanji, in Matsué. - -[68] Signifying:--“believing man of mind as chastely pure as the snow -upon a peak in winter.” - -[69] This is the kaimyō of the lady for whose sake the temple of -Kobudera was built; and the words “Mansion of Self-witness” here refer -to the temple itself, which is thus named (_Ji-Shō In_). The Chinese -text reads:--“Ji-Shō-In den, Kwo-zan Kyō-kei, Daishi,”--literally, -“Great Elder-Sister, Dawn-Katsura-of-Luminous-Mountain, dwelling in the -August Mansion of Self-witness.” The katsura (_olea fragrans_) is a tree -mysteriously connected, in Japanese poetical fancy, with the moon; and -its name is often used, as here, to signify the moon. _Katsura-no-hana_, -or “katsura-flower” is a poetical term for moonlight.--This kaimyō is -remarkable in having the honorific term “August” prefixed to the name of -the mansion or temple,--a sign of the high rank of the dead lady. The -full date inscribed is “twenty-eighth day of Mid-Autumn” (the old eighth -month) “of the seventeenth year of Kwansei” (1640 A. D.) - -[70] The prefix _dai_ (great) before the ordinary term _dōji_ (male -child) is of rare occurrence. Probably the lad was of princely birth. -The grave is in a reserved part of the Kobudera cemetery; and the -year-date of death is “the fourth of Enkyō”--corresponding to 1747. - -[71] The tomb bearing this kaimyō is set beside that inscribed with the -kaimyō preceding. Probably the boys were brothers. In both instances we -have the honorific prefix “dai,” and the term “August” qualifying the -mansion-name. The year-date of death is “the second of Kwan-en” (1749). - -[72] Probably a princely child,--sister apparently of the highborn boys -before referred to. She is buried beside them in Kobudera. Observe here -again the use of the prefix _dai_,--this time before the term _dōnyo_, -“child-girl” or “child-daughter.” Perhaps the _dai_ here would be better -rendered by “grand” than by “great.” Notice that the term “August” -precedes the mansion-name in this case also. The date of death is given -as “the sixth year of Hōreki” (1756). - - - - -Frogs - -[Illustration] - - “With hands resting upon the floor, reverentially you repeat - your poem, O frog!” - - _Ancient Poem._ - - - - -I - -Few of the simpler sense-impressions of travel remain more intimately -and vividly associated with the memory of a strange land than -sounds,--sounds of the open country. Only the traveller knows how -Nature’s voices--voices of forest and river and plain--vary according to -zone; and it is nearly always some local peculiarity of their tone or -character that appeals to feeling and penetrates into memory,--giving us -the sensation of the foreign and the far-away. In Japan this sensation -is especially aroused by the music of insects,--hemiptera uttering -a sound-language wonderfully different from that of their Western -congeners. To a lesser degree the exotic accent is noticeable also in -the chanting of Japanese frogs,--though the sound impresses itself upon -remembrance rather by reason of its ubiquity. Rice being cultivated all -over the country,--not only upon mountain-slopes and hill-tops, but even -within the limits of the cities,--there are flushed levels everywhere, -and everywhere frogs. No one who has travelled in Japan will forget the -clamor of the ricefields. - -Hushed only during the later autumn and brief winter, with the first -wakening of spring waken all the voices of the marsh-lands,--the -infinite bubbling chorus that might be taken for the speech of the -quickening soil itself. And the universal mystery of life seems to -thrill with a peculiar melancholy in that vast utterance--heard through -forgotten thousands of years by forgotten generations of toilers, but -doubtless older by myriad ages than the race of man. - -Now this song of solitude has been for centuries a favorite theme -with Japanese poets; but the Western reader may be surprised to learn -that it has appealed to them rather as a pleasant sound than as a -nature-manifestation. - - * * * * * - -Innumerable poems have been written about the singing of frogs; but a -large proportion of them would prove unintelligible if understood as -referring to common frogs. When the general chorus of the ricefield -finds praise in Japanese verse, the poet expresses his pleasure only -in the great volume of sound produced by the blending of millions of -little croakings,--a blending which really has a pleasant effect, -well compared to the lulling sound of the falling of rain. But when -the poet pronounces an individual frog-call melodious, he is not -speaking of the common frog of the ricefields. Although most kinds of -Japanese frogs are croakers, there is one remarkable exception--(not -to mention tree-frogs),--the _kajika_, or true singing-frog of Japan. -To say that it croaks would be an injustice to its note, which is -sweet as the chirrup of a song-bird. It used to be called _kawazu_; -but as this ancient appellation latterly became confounded in common -parlance with _kaeru_, the general name for ordinary frogs, it is now -called only _kajika_. The _kajika_ is kept as a domestic pet, and is -sold in Tōkyō by several insect-merchants. It is housed in a peculiar -cage, the lower part of which is a basin containing sand and pebbles, -fresh water and small plants; the upper part being a framework of fine -wire-gauze. Sometimes the basin is fitted up as a _ko-niwa_, or model -landscape-garden. In these times the kajika is considered as one of -the singers of spring and summer; but formerly it was classed with -the melodists of autumn; and people used to make autumn-trips to the -country for the mere pleasure of hearing it sing. And just as various -places used to be famous for the music of particular varieties of -night-crickets, so there were places celebrated only as haunts of the -kajika. The following were especially noted:-- - -Tamagawa and Ōsawa-no-Iké,--a river and a lake in the province of -Yamashiro. - -Miwagawa, Asukagawa, Sawogawa, Furu-no-Yamada, and Yoshinogawa,--all in -the province of Yamato. - -Koya-no-Iké,--in Settsu. - -Ukinu-no-Iké,--in Iwami. - -Ikawa-no-Numa,--in Kōzuké. - -Now it is the melodious cry of the kajika, or kawazu, which is so often -praised in far-Eastern verse; and, like the music of insects, it is -mentioned in the oldest extant collections of Japanese poems. In the -preface to the famous anthology called _Kokinshū_, compiled by Imperial -Decree during the fifth year of the period of Engi (A. D. 905), the -poet Ki-no-Tsurayuki, chief editor of the work, makes these interesting -observations:-- - ---“The poetry of Japan has its roots in the human heart, and thence has -grown into a multi-form utterance. Man in this world, having a thousand -millions of things to undertake and to complete, has been moved to -express his thoughts and his feelings concerning all that he sees and -hears. When we hear the _uguisu_[73] singing among flowers, and the -voice of the kawazu which inhabits the waters, what mortal [_lit.: ‘who -among the living that lives’_] does not compose poems?” - -The kawazu thus referred to by Tsurayuki is of course the same creature -as the modern kajika: no common frog could have been mentioned as a -songster in the same breath with that wonderful bird, the uguisu. And -no common frog could have inspired any classical poet with so pretty a -fancy as this:-- - - Té wo tsuité, - Uta moshi-aguru, - Kawazu kana! - -“With hands resting on the ground, reverentially you repeat your poem, -O frog!” The charm of this little verse can best be understood by those -familiar with the far-Eastern etiquette of posture while addressing -a superior,--kneeling, with the body respectfully inclined, and hands -resting upon the floor, with the fingers pointing outwards.[74] - -It is scarcely possible to determine the antiquity of the custom of -writing poems about frogs; but in the _Manyōshū_, dating back to the -middle of the eighth century, there is a poem which suggests that even -at that time the river Asuka had long been famous for the singing of its -frogs:-- - - Ima mo ka mo - Asuka no kawa no - Yū sarazu - Kawazu naku sé no - Kiyoku aruran. - -“Still clear in our day remains the stream of Asuka, where the kawazu -nightly sing.” We find also in the same anthology the following curious -reference to the singing of frogs:-- - - Omoboyezu - Kimaseru kimi wo, - Sasagawa no - Kawazu kikasezu - Kayeshi tsuru kamo! - -“Unexpectedly I received the august visit of my lord.... Alas, that he -should have returned without hearing the frogs of the river Sawa!” And -in the _Rokujōshū_, another ancient compilation, are preserved these -pleasing verses on the same theme:-- - - Tamagawa no - Hito wo mo yogizu - Naku kawazu, - Kono yū kikéba - Oshiku ya wa aranu? - -“Hearing to-night the frogs of the Jewel River [or Tamagawa], that sing -without fear of man, how can I help loving the passing moment?” - - -II - -Thus it appears that for more than eleven hundred years the Japanese -have been making poems about frogs; and it is at least possible that -verses on this subject, which have been preserved in the _Manyōshū_, -were composed even earlier than the eighth century. From the oldest -classical period to the present day, the theme has never ceased to -be a favorite one with poets of all ranks. A fact noteworthy in -this relation is that the first poem written in the measure called -_hokku_, by the famous Bashō, was about frogs. The triumph of this -extremely brief form of verse--(three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables -respectively)--is to create one complete sensation-picture; and Bashō’s -original accomplishes the feat,--difficult, if not impossible, to repeat -in English:-- - - Furu iké ya, - Kawazu tobikomu, - Midzu no oto. - -(“Old pond--frogs jumping in--sound of water.”) An immense number of -poems about frogs were subsequently written in this measure. Even at -the present time professional men of letters amuse themselves by making -short poems on frogs. Distinguished among these is a young poet known -to the Japanese literary world by the pseudonym of “Roséki,” who lives -in Ōsaka and keeps in the pond of his garden hundreds of singing frogs. -At fixed intervals he invites all his poet-friends to a feast, with the -proviso that each must compose, during the entertainment, one poem about -the inhabitants of the pond. A collection of the verses thus obtained -was privately printed in the spring of 1897, with funny pictures of -frogs decorating the covers and illustrating the text. - -But unfortunately it is not possible through English translation to give -any fair idea of the range and character of the literature of frogs. The -reason is that the greater number of compositions about frogs depend -chiefly for their literary value upon the untranslatable,--upon local -allusions, for example, incomprehensible outside of Japan; upon puns; -and upon the use of words with double or even triple meanings. Scarcely -two or three in every one hundred poems can bear translation. So I can -attempt little more than a few general observations. - - * * * * * - -That love-poems should form a considerable proportion of this curious -literature will not seem strange to the reader when he is reminded that -the lovers’ trysting-hour is also the hour when the frog-chorus is in -full cry, and that, in Japan at least, the memory of the sound would be -associated with the memory of a secret meeting in almost any solitary -place. The frog referred to in such poems is not usually the kajika. -But frogs are introduced into love-poetry in countless clever ways. I -can give two examples of modern popular compositions of this kind. The -first contains an allusion to the famous proverb,--_I no naka no kawazu -daikai wo shirazu_: “The frog in the well knows not the great sea.” A -person quite innocent of the ways of the world is compared to a frog in -a well; and we may suppose the speaker of the following lines to be some -sweet-hearted country-girl, answering an ungenerous remark with very -pretty tact:-- - - _Laugh me to scorn if you please;--call me your “frog-in-the-well”: - Flowers fall into my well; and its water mirrors the moon!_ - -The second poem is supposed to be the utterance of a woman having good -reason to be jealous:-- - - _Dull as a stagnant pond you deemed the mind of your mistress; - But the stagnant pond can speak: you shall hear the cry of the - frog!_ - -Outside of love-poems there are hundreds of verses about the common -frogs of ponds or ricefields. Some refer chiefly to the volume of the -sound that the frogs make:-- - - _Hearing the frogs of the ricefields, methinks that the water - sings._ - - _As we flush the ricefields of spring, the frog-song flows with - the water._ - - _From ricefield to ricefield they call: unceasing the challenge - and answer._ - - _Ever as deepens the night, louder the chorus of pond-frogs._ - - _So many the voices of frogs that I cannot but wonder if the pond - be not wider at night than by day!_ - - _Even the rowing boats can scarce proceed, so thick the clamor of - the frogs of Horié!_ - -The exaggeration of the last verse is of course intentional, and in the -original not uneffective. In some parts of the world--in the marshes of -Florida and of southern Louisiana, for example,--the clamor of the frogs -at certain seasons resembles the roaring of a furious sea; and whoever -has heard it can appreciate the fancy of sound as obstacle. - -Other poems compare or associate the sound made by frogs with the sound -of rain:-- - - _The song of the earliest frogs,--fainter than falling of rain._ - - _What I took for the falling of rain is only the singing of frogs._ - - _Now I shall dream, lulled by the patter of rain and the song of - the frogs._ - -Other poems, again, are intended only as tiny pictures,--thumb-nail -sketches,--such as this _hokku_,-- - - _Path between ricefields; frogs jumping away to right and left_;-- - ---or this, which is a thousand years old:-- - - _Where the flowers of the yamabuki are imaged in the still - marsh-water, the voice of the kawazu is heard_;-- - ---or the following pretty fancy:-- - - _Now sings the frog, and the voice of the frog is perfumed;--for - into the shining stream the cherry-petals fall._ - -The last two pieces refer, of course, to the true singing frog. - -Many short poems are addressed directly to the frog itself,--whether -kaeru or kajika. There are poems of melancholy, of affection, of humor, -of religion, and even of philosophy among these. Sometimes the frog is -likened to a spirit resting on a lotos-leaf; sometimes, to a priest -repeating sûtras for the sake of the dying flowers; sometimes to a -pining lover; sometimes to a host receiving travellers; sometimes to a -blasphemer, “always beginning” to say something against the gods, but -always afraid to finish it. Most of the following examples are taken -from the recent book of frog-poems published by Roséki;--each paragraph -of my prose rendering, it should be remembered, represents a distinct -poem:-- - - _Now all the guests being gone, why still thus respectfully - sitting, O frog?_ - - _So resting your hands on the ground, do you welcome the Rain, - O frog?_ - - _You disturb in the ancient well the light of the stars, O frog!_ - - _Sleepy the sound of the rain; but your voice makes me dream, - O frog!_ - - _Always beginning to say something against the great Heaven, - O frog!_ - - _You have learned that the world is void: you never look at it as - you float, O frog!_ - - _Having lived in clear-rushing mountain-streams, never can your - voice become stagnant, O frog!_ - -The last pleasing conceit shows the esteem in which the superior vocal -powers of the kajika are held. - - -III - -I thought it strange that out of hundreds of frog-poems collected for me -I could not discover a single mention of the coldness and clamminess of -the frog. Except a few jesting lines about the queer attitudes sometimes -assumed by the creature, the only reference to its uninviting qualities -that I could find was the mild remark, - - _Seen in the daytime, how uninteresting you are, O frog!_ - -While wondering at this reticence concerning the chilly, slimy, -flaccid nature of frogs, it all at once occurred to me that in other -thousands of Japanese poems which I had read there was a total absence -of allusions to tactual sensations. Sensations of colors, sounds, -and odors were rendered with exquisite and surprising delicacy; but -sensations of taste were seldom mentioned, and sensations of touch -were absolutely ignored. I asked myself whether the reason for this -reticence or indifference should be sought in the particular temperament -or mental habit of the race; but I have not yet been able to decide -the question. Remembering that the race has been living for ages upon -food which seems tasteless to the Western palate, and that impulses to -such action as hand-clasping, embracing, kissing, or other physical -display of affectionate feeling, are really foreign to far-Eastern -character, one is tempted to the theory that gustatory and tactual -sensations, pleasurable and otherwise, have been less highly evolved -with the Japanese than with us. But there is much evidence against such -a theory; and the triumphs of Japanese handicraft assure us of an almost -incomparable delicacy of touch developed in special directions. Whatever -be the physiological meaning of the phenomenon, its moral meaning -is of most importance. So far as I have been able to judge, Japanese -poetry usually ignores the inferior qualities of sensation, while making -the subtlest of appeals to those superior qualities which we call -æsthetic. Even if representing nothing else, this fact represents the -healthiest and happiest attitude toward Nature. Do not we Occidentals -shrink from many purely natural impressions by reason of repulsion -developed through a morbid tactual sensibility? The question is at least -worth considering. Ignoring or mastering such repulsion,--accepting -naked Nature as she is, always lovable when understood,--the Japanese -discover beauty where we blindly imagine ugliness or formlessness or -loathsomeness,--beauty in insects, beauty in stones, beauty in frogs. -Is the fact without significance that they alone have been able to make -artistic use of the form of the centipede?... You should see my Kyōtō -tobacco-pouch, with centipedes of gold running over its figured leather -like ripplings of fire! - -FOOTNOTES: - -[73] _Cettia cantans_,--the Japanese nightingale. - -[74] Such, at least, is the posture prescribed by the old etiquette -for _men_. But the rules were very complicated, and varied somewhat -according to rank as well as to sex. Women usually turn the fingers -inward instead of outward when assuming this posture. - - - - -Of Moon-Desire - -[Illustration] - - -I - -He was two years old when--as ordained in the law of perpetual -recurrence--he asked me for the Moon. - -Unwisely I protested,-- - -“The Moon I cannot give you because it is too high up. I cannot reach -it.” - -He answered:-- - -“By taking a very long bamboo, you probably could reach it, and knock it -down.” - -I said,-- - -“There is no bamboo long enough.” - -He suggested:-- - -“By standing on the ridge of the roof of the house, you probably could -poke it with the bamboo.” - ---Whereat I found myself constrained to make some approximately truthful -statements concerning the nature and position of the Moon. - -This set me thinking. I thought about the strange fascination that -brightness exerts upon living creatures in general,--upon insects and -fishes and birds and mammals,--and tried to account for it by some -inherited memory of brightness as related to food, to water, and to -freedom. I thought of the countless generations of children who have -asked for the Moon, and of the generations of parents who have laughed -at the asking. And then I entered into the following meditation:-- - - * * * * * - -Have we any right to laugh at the child’s wish for the Moon? No wish -could be more natural; and as for its incongruity,--do not we, children -of a larger growth, mostly nourish wishes quite as innocent,--longings -that if realized could only work us woe,--such as desire for the -continuance after death of that very sense-life, or individuality, -which once deluded us all into wanting to play with the Moon, and often -subsequently deluded us in far less pleasant ways? - -Now foolish as may seem, to merely empirical reasoning, the wish of the -child for the Moon, I have an idea that the highest wisdom commands us -to wish for very much more than the Moon,--even for more than the Sun -and the Morning-Star and all the Host of Heaven. - - -II - -I remember when a boy lying on my back in the grass, gazing into the -summer blue above me, and wishing that I could melt into it,--become -a part of it. For these fancies I believe that a religious tutor was -innocently responsible: he had tried to explain to me, because of -certain dreamy questions, what he termed “the folly and the wickedness -of pantheism,”--with the result that I immediately became a pantheist, -at the tender age of fifteen. And my imaginings presently led me not -only to want the sky for a playground, but also to become the sky! - -Now I think that in those days I was really close to a great -truth,--touching it, in fact, without the faintest suspicion of its -existence. I mean the truth that the wish _to become_ is reasonable in -direct ratio to its largeness,--or, in other words, that the more you -wish to be, the wiser you are; while the wish _to have_ is apt to be -foolish in proportion to its largeness. Cosmic law permits us very few -of the countless things that we wish to have, but will help us to become -all that we can possibly wish to be. Finite, and in so much feeble, -is the wish to have: but infinite in puissance is the wish to become; -and every mortal wish to become must eventually find satisfaction. By -wanting to be, the monad makes itself the elephant, the eagle, or the -man. By wanting to be, the man should become a god. Perhaps on this -tiny globe, lighted only by a tenth-rate yellow sun, he will not have -time to become a god; but who dare assert that his wish cannot project -itself to mightier systems illuminated by vaster suns, and there reshape -and invest him with the forms and powers of divinity? Who dare even say -that his wish may not expand him beyond the Limits of Form, and make him -one with Omnipotence? And Omnipotence, without asking, can have much -brighter and bigger play-things than the Moon. - -Probably everything is a mere question of wishing,--providing that we -wish, not to have, but to be. Most of the sorrow of life certainly -exists because of the wrong kind of wishing and because of the -contemptible pettiness of the wishes. Even to wish for the absolute -lordship and possession of the entire earth were a pitifully small -and vulgar wish. We must learn to nourish very much bigger wishes than -that! My faith is that we must wish to become the total universe with -its thousands of millions of worlds,--and more than the universe, or a -myriad universes,--and more even than Space and Time. - - -III - -Possibly the power for such wishing must depend upon our comprehension -of the ghostliness of substance. Once men endowed with spirit all forms -and motions and utterances of Nature: stone and metal, herb and tree, -cloud and wind,--the lights of heaven, the murmuring of leaves and -waters, the echoes of the hills, the tumultuous speech of the sea. Then -becoming wiser in their own conceit, they likewise became of little -faith; and they talked about “the Inanimate” and “the Inert,”--which -are nonexistent,--and discoursed of Force as distinct from Matter, and -of Mind as distinct from both. Yet we now discover that the primitive -fancies were, after all, closer to probable truth. We cannot indeed -think of Nature to-day precisely as did our forefathers; but we find -ourselves obliged to think of her in very much weirder ways; and the -later revelations of our science have revitalized not a little of the -primitive thought, and infused it with a new and awful beauty. And -meantime those old savage sympathies with savage Nature that spring -from the deepest sources of our being,--always growing with our growth, -strengthening with our strength, more and more unfolding with the -evolution of our higher sensibilities,--would seem destined to sublime -at last into forms of cosmical emotion expanding and responding to -infinitude. - - * * * * * - -Have you never thought about those immemorial feelings?... Have you -never, when looking at some great burning, found yourself exulting -without remorse in the triumph and glory of fire?--never unconsciously -coveted the crumbling, splitting, iron-wrenching, granite-cracking -force of its imponderable touch?--never delighted in the furious and -terrible splendor of its phantasmagories,--the ravening and bickering -of its dragons,--the monstrosity of its archings,--the ghostly soaring -and flapping of its spires? Have you never, with a hill-wind pealing -in your ears, longed to ride that wind like a ghost,--to scream round -the peaks with it,--to sweep the face of the world with it? Or, watching -the lifting, the gathering, the muttering rush and thunder-burst of -breakers, have you felt no impulse kindred to that giant motion,--no -longing to leap with that wild white tossing, and to join in that mighty -shout?... And all such ancient emotional sympathies with Nature’s -familiar forces--do they not prelude, with their modern æsthetic -developments, the future growth of rarer sympathies with incomparably -subtler forces, and of longings to be limited only by our power to know? -Know ether--shivering from star to star;--comprehend its sensitivities, -its penetrancies, its transmutations;--and sympathies ethereal will -evolve. Know the forces that spin the suns;--and already the way has -been reached of becoming one with them. - -And furthermore, is there no suggestion of such evolvement in the -steady widening through all the centuries of the thoughts of their -world-priests and poets?--in the later sense of Life-as-Unity absorbing -or transforming the ancient childish sense of life-personal?--in the -tone of the new rapture in world-beauty, dominating the elder worship -of beauty-human?--in the larger modern joy evoked by the blossoming -of dawns, the blossoming of stars,--by all quiverings of color, all -shudderings of light? And is not the thing-in-itself, the detail, the -appearance, being ever less and less studied for its mere power to -charm, and ever more and more studied as a single character in that -Infinite Riddle of which all phenomena are but ideographs? - - * * * * * - -Nay!--surely the time must come when we shall desire to be all that -is, all that ever has been known,--the past and the present and the -future in one,--all feeling, striving, thinking, joying, sorrowing,--and -everywhere the Part,--and everywhere the Whole. And before us, with the -waxing of the wish, perpetually the Infinities shall widen. - -And I--even I!--by virtue of that wish, shall become all forms, all -forces, all conditions: Ether, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth,--all motion -visible or viewless,--all vibration named of light, of color, of -sonority, of torrefaction,--all thrillings piercing substance,--all -oscillations picturing in blackness, like the goblin-vision of the -X-rays. By virtue of that wish I shall become the Source of all -becoming and of all ceasing,--the Power that shapes, the Power that -dissolves,--creating, with the shadows of my sleep, the life that shall -vanish with my wakening. And even as phosphor-lampings in currents -of midnight sea, so shall shimmer and pulse and pass, in mine Ocean -of Death and Birth, the burning of billions of suns, the whirling of -trillions of worlds.... - - -IV - ---“Well,” said the friend to whom I read this revery, “there is some -Buddhism in your fancies--though you seem to have purposely avoided -several important points of doctrine. For instance, you must know that -Nirvana is never to be reached by wishing, but by _not_ wishing. What -you call the ‘wish-to-become’ can only help us, like a lantern, along -the darker portions of the Way. As for wanting the Moon--I think that -you must have seen many old Japanese pictures of apes clutching at the -reflection of the Moon in water. The subject is a Buddhist parable: the -water is the phantom-flux of sensations and ideas; the Moon--not its -distorted image--is the sole Truth. And your Western philosopher was -really teaching a Buddhist parable when he proclaimed man but a higher -kind of ape. For in this world of illusion, man is truly still the ape, -trying to seize on water the shadow of the Moon.” - ---“Ape indeed,” I made answer,--“but an ape of gods,--even that divine -Ape of the Ramayana who may clutch the Sun!” - - - - -Retrospectives - -[Illustration] - - “Murmurs and scents of the Infinite Sea.” - - --MATTHEW ARNOLD. - - - - -First Impressions - -[Illustration] - - -I - -I wonder why the emblematical significance of the Composite Photograph -has been so little considered by the philosophers of evolution. In -the blending and coalescing of the shadows that make it, is there no -suggestion of that bioplasmic chemistry which, out of the intermingling -of innumerable lives, crystallizes the composite of personality? Has the -superimposition of images upon the sensitized plate no likeness to those -endless superimpositions of heredity out of which every individuality -must shape itself?... Surely it is a very weird thing, this Composite -Photograph,--and hints of things weirder. - - * * * * * - -Every human face is a living composite of countless faces,--generations -and generations of faces superimposed upon the sensitive film of Life -for the great cosmic developing process. And any living face, well -watched by love or by hate, will reveal the fact. The face of friend -or sweetheart has a hundred different aspects; and you know that you -want, when his or her “likeness” is taken, to insist upon the reflection -of the dearest of these. The face of your enemy,--no matter what -antipathy it may excite,--is not invariably hateful in itself: you must -acknowledge, to yourself at least, having observed in it moments of an -expression the reverse of unworthy. - -Probably the ancestral types that try to reproduce themselves in -the modulations of facial expression, are nearly always the more -recent;--the very ancient having become metamorphosed, under weight of -superimposition, into a blank underlying vagueness,--a mere protoplasmic -background out of which, except in rare and monstrous cases, no -outline can detach itself. But in every normal face whole generations -of types do certainly, by turns of mood, make flitting apparition. -Any mother knows this. Studying day by day the features of her child, -she finds in them variations not to be explained by simple growth. -Sometimes there is a likeness to one parent or grandparent; sometimes -a likeness to another, or to remoter kindred; and at rarer intervals -may appear peculiarities of expression that no member of the family can -account for. (Thus, in darker centuries, the ghastly superstition of -the “changeling,” was not only possible, but in a certain sense quite -natural.) Through youth and manhood and far into old age these mutations -continue,--though always more slowly and faintly,--even while the -general characteristics steadily accentuate; and death itself may bring -into the countenance some strange expression never noticed during life. - - -II - -As a rule we recognize faces by the modes of expression habitually -worn,--by the usually prevalent character-tones of them,--rather than -by any steady memory of lines. But no face at all moments remains -exactly the same; and in cases of exceptional variability the expression -does not suffice for recognition: we have to look for some fixed -peculiarity, some minute superficial detail independent of physiognomy. -All expression has but a relative permanency: even in faces the -most strongly marked, its variations may defy estimate. Perhaps the -mobility is, within certain limits, in direct ratio to irregularity -of feature;--any approach to ideal beauty being also an approach to -relative fixity. At all events, the more familiar we become with any -common face, the more astonishing the multitude of the transformations -we observe in it,--the more indescribable and bewildering its fugitive -subtleties of expression. And what are these but the ebb and flow of -life ancestral,--under-ripplings in that well-spring unfathomable of -personality whose flood is Soul. Perpetually beneath the fluid tissues -of flesh the dead are moulding and moving--not singly (for in no -phenomenon is there any singleness), but in currents and by surgings. -Sometimes there is an eddying of ghosts of love; and the face dawns as -if a sunrise lighted it. Sometimes there is a billowing up of ghosts of -hate; and the face darkens and distorts like an evil dream,--and we say -to the mind behind it, “You are not now _your better self_.” But that -which we call the self, whether the better or the worse, is a complexity -forever shifting the order of its combinations. According to stimulus of -hope or fear, of joy or pain, there must vibrate within every being, at -differing rhythms, with varying oscillation, incalculable tremulosities -of ancestral life. In the calmest normal existence slumber all the -psychical tones of the past,--from the lurid red of primal sense-impulse -to the violet of spiritual aspiration,--even as all known colours sleep -in white light. And over the sensitive living mask, at each strong -alternation of the psychical currents, flit shadowy resurrections of -dead expression. - -Seeing faces and their changes, we learn intuitively the relation to -our own selves of the selves that confront us. In very few cases could -we even try to explain how this knowledge comes,--how we reach those -conclusions called, in common parlance, “first impressions.” Faces -are not _read_. The impressions they give are only _felt_, and have -much of the same vague character as impressions of sound,--making -within us mental states either pleasant or unpleasant or somewhat -of both,--evoking now a sense of danger, now a melting sympathy, -occasionally a gentle sadness. And these impressions, though seldom at -fault, cannot be very well explained in words. The reasons of their -accuracy are likewise the reasons of their mystery,--reasons not to -be discovered in the narrow range of our personal experience,--reasons -very, very much older than we. Could we remember our former lives, we -should know more exactly the meaning of our likes and our dislikes. For -the truth is that they are superindividual. It is not the individual eye -that perceives everything perceived in a face. The dead are the real -seers. But as they remain unable to guide us otherwise than by touching -the chords of mental pleasure or pain, we can feel the relative meaning -of faces only in a dim, though powerful way. - -Instinctively, at least, superindividuality is commonly recognized. -Hence such phrases as “force of character,” “moral force,” “personal -fascination,” “personal magnetism,” and others showing that the -influence exerted by man upon man is known to be independent of mere -physical conditions. Very insignificant bodies have that within them by -which formidable bodies are mastered and directed. The flesh-and-blood -man is only the visible end of an invisible column of force reaching -out of the infinite past into the momentary present,--only the material -Symbol of an immaterial host. A contest between even two wills is a -contest of phantom armies. The domination of many personalities by the -simple will of one,--hinting the perception by the compelled of superior -viewless powers behind the compeller,--is never to be interpreted by the -old hypothesis of soul-equality. Only by scientific psychology can the -mystery of certain formidable characters be even partly explained; but -any explanation must rest upon the acceptance, in some form or other, -of the immense evolutional fact of psychical inheritance. And psychical -inheritance signifies the super-individual,--pre-existence revived in -compound personality. - -Yet, from our ethical standpoint, that super-individuality which we -thus unconsciously allow in the very language used to express psychical -domination, is a lower manifestation. Though working often for good, the -power in itself is of evil; and the recognition of it by the subjugated -is not a recognition of higher moral energy, but of a higher _mental_ -energy signifying larger evolutional experience of wrong, deeper -reserves of aggressive ingenuity, heavier capacities for the giving of -pain. Called by no matter what euphemistic name, such power is brutal -in its origin, and still allied to those malignities and ferocities -shared by man with lower predatory creatures. But the beauty of the -superindividual is revealed in that rarer power which the dead lend the -living to win trust, to inspire ideals, to create love, to brighten -whole circles of existence with the charm and wonder of a personality -never to be described save in the language of light and music. - - -III - -Now if we could photographically _decompose_ a composite photograph -so as to separate in order inverse all the impressions interblended -to make it, such process would clumsily represent what really -happens when the image of a strange face is telegraphed back--like a -police-photograph--from the living retina to the mysterious offices -of inherited memory. There, with the quickness of an electric flash, -the shadow-face is decomposed into all the ancestral types combined -in it; and the resulting verdict of the dead, though rendered only by -indefinable sensation, is more trustworthy than any written certificate -of character could ever be. But its trustworthiness is limited to -the _potential_ relation of the individual seen to the individual -seeing. Upon different minds, according to the delicate balance of -personality,--according to the qualitative sum of inherited experience -in the psychical composition of the observer,--the same features will -make very different impressions. A face that strongly repels one person -may not less strongly attract another, and will produce nearly similar -impressions only on groups of emotionally homogeneous natures. Certainly -the fact of this ability to discern in the composition of faces that -indefinable something which welcomes or which warns, does suggest -the possibility of deciding some laws of ethical physiognomy; but -such laws would necessarily be of a very general and simple kind, and -their relative value could never equal that of the uneducated personal -intuition. - -How, indeed, should it be otherwise? What science could ever hope to -measure the infinite possibilities of psychical combination? And the -present in every countenance is a recombination of the past;--the living -is always a resurrection of the dead. The sympathies and the fears, -the hopes and the repulsions that faces inspire, are but revivals and -reiterations,--echoes of sentiency created in millions of minds by -immeasurable experience operating through immeasurable time. My friend -of this hour, though no more identical with his forefathers than any -single ripple of a current is identical with all the ripples that ever -preceded it, is nevertheless by soul-composition one with myriads known -and loved in other lands and in other lives,--in times recorded and in -times forgotten,--in cities that still remain and in cities that have -ceased to be,--by thousands of my vanished selves. - - - - -Beauty is Memory - -[Illustration] - - -I - -When you first saw her your heart leaped, and a tingling shocked through -all your blood like a gush of electricity. Simultaneously your senses -were changed, and long so remained. - -That sudden throb was the awakening of your dead;--and that thrill was -made by the swarming and the crowding of them;--and that change of sense -was wrought only by their multitudinous desire,--for which reason it -seemed _an intensification_. They remembered having loved a number of -young persons somewhat resembling her. But where, or when, they did not -recollect. They--(and They, of course, are You)--had drunk of Lethe many -times since then. - -The true name of the River of Forgetfulness is the River of -Death--though you may not find authority for the statement in classical -dictionaries. But the Greek story, that the waters of Lethe bring -to weary souls oblivion of the past, is not quite true. One draught -will indeed numb and becloud some forms of memory,--will efface the -remembrance of dates and names and of other trifling details;--but a -million draughts will not produce total oblivion. Even the destruction -of the world would not have that result. _Nothing is absolutely -forgotten except the non-essential._ The essential can, at most, only be -dimmed by the drinking of Lethe. - -It was because of billions of billions of memories amassed through -trillions of lives, and blended within you into some one vague delicious -image, that you came to believe a certain being more beautiful than -the sun. The delusion signified that she happened to resemble this -composite,--mnemonic shadowing of all the dead women related to the -loves of your innumerable lives. And this first part of your experience, -when you could not understand,--when you fancied the beloved a witch, -and never even dreamed that the witchery might be the work of ghosts, -was--the Period of Wonder. - - -II - -Wonder at what? At the power and mystery of beauty. (For whether only -within yourself, or partly within and partly outside of yourself, it -was beauty that you saw, and that made you wonder.) But you will now -remember that the beloved seemed lovelier than mortal woman really could -be;--and the how and the why of that seeming are questions of interest. - - * * * * * - -With the power to see beauty we are born--somewhat, though not -altogether, as we are born with the power to perceive color. Most -human beings are able to discern something of beauty, or at least -of approach to beauty--though the volume of the faculty varies in -different individuals more than the volume of a mountain varies from -that of a grain of sand. There are men born blind; but the normal being -inherits some ideal of beauty. It may be vivid or it may be vague; but -in every case it represents an accumulation of countless impressions -received by the race,--countless fragments, of prenatal remembrance -crystallized into one composite image within organic memory, where, -like the viewless image on a photographic plate awaiting development, it -remains awhile in darkness absolute. And just because it is a composite -of numberless race-memories of individual attraction, this ideal -necessarily represents, in the superior mind, a something above the -existing possible,--something never to be realized, much less surpassed, -in the present state of humanity. - -And what is the relation of this composite, fairer than human -possibility, to the illusion of love? If it be permissible to speak -one’s imagining of the unimaginable, I can dare a theory. When, in -the hour of the ripeness of youth, there is perceived some objective -comeliness faintly corresponding to certain outlines of the inherited -ideal, at once a wave of emotion ancestral bathes the long-darkened -image, defines it, illuminates it,--and so deludes the senses;--for the -sense-reflection of the living objective becomes temporarily blended -with the subjective phantasm,--with the beautiful luminous ghost made -of centillions of memories. Thus to the lover the common suddenly -becomes the impossible, because he really perceives blended with it the -superindividual and superhuman. He is much too deeply bewitched by that -supernatural to be persuaded of his illusion, by any reasoning. What -conquers his will is not the magic of anything living or tangible, but a -charm sinuous and fugitive and light as fire,--a spectral snare prepared -for him by myriads unthinkable of generations of dead. - - * * * * * - -So much and no more of theory I venture as to the _how_ of the riddle. -But what of the _why_,--the reason of the emotion made by this ghostly -beauty revived out of the measureless past? What should beauty have to -do with a superindividual ecstasy older than all æsthetic feeling? What -is the evolutional secret of the fascination of beauty? - -I think that an answer can be given. But it will involve the fullest -acceptance of this truth:--_There is no such thing as beauty-in-itself._ - -All the riddles and contradictions of our æsthetic systems are natural -consequences of the delusion that beauty is a something absolute, a -transcendental reality, an eternal fact. It is true that the appearance -we call beauty is the symbol of a fact,--is the visible manifestation of -a development beyond the ordinary,--a bodily evolution more advanced -than the existing average. In like manner what we call grace is a real -manifestation of the economy of force. But since there can be no cosmic -limit to evolutional possibilities, there never can be any standards of -grace or of beauty that are not relative and essentially transitory; and -there can be no physical ideals,--not even Greek ideals,--that might -not in the course of human evolution or of superhuman evolution be so -much more than realized as to become vulgarities of form. An ultimate -of beauty is inconceivable and impossible; no term of æsthetics can -ever represent more than the idea of a phase of the perpetual becoming, -a temporary relation in comparative evolution. Beauty-in-itself is -only the name of a sensation, or complex of sensation, mistaken for -objectivity--much as sound and light and color were once imagined to be -realities. - -Yet what is it that attracts?--what is the meaning of the resistless -emotion which we call the Sense of Beauty? - -Like the sensing of light or color or perfume, the recognition of -beauty is a recognition of fact. But that fact bears to the feeling -evoked no more likeness than the reality of five hundred billions of -ether-shiverings per second bears to the sensation of orange. Still in -either case the fact is a manifestation of force. Representing higher -evolution, the phenomenon termed beauty also represents a relatively -superior fitness for life, a higher ability to fulfil the conditions of -existence; and it is the non-conscious perception of this representation -that makes the fascination. The longing aroused is not for any mere -abstraction, but for greater completeness of faculty as means to the -natural end. To the dead within each man, beauty signifies the presence -of what they need most,--Power. They know, in despite of Lethe, that -when they lived in comely bodies life was usually made easy and happy -for them, and that when prisoned in feeble or in ugly bodies, they found -life miserable or difficult. They want to live many times again in sound -young bodies,--in shapes that assure force, health, joy, quickness to -win and energy to keep the best prizes of life’s contest. They want, -if possible, conditions better than any of the past, but in no event -conditions worse. - - -III - -And so the Riddle resolves itself as Memory,--immeasurable Memory of all -bodily fitness for the ends of life: a Composite glorified, doubtless, -by some equally measureless inherited sense of all the vanished joys -ever associated with such fitness. - -Infinite, may we not term it--this Composite? Aye, but not merely -because the multitudes of dead memories that make it are unspeakable. -Equally unspeakable the width and the depth of the range of them -throughout the enormity of Time.... O lover, how slender the beautiful -witch,--the ghost within the ghost of you! Yet the depth of that ghost -is the depth of the Nebulous Zone bespanning Night,--the luminous Shadow -that Egypt figured of old as Mother of the Sun and the Gods, curving -her long white woman’s-body over the world. As a vapor of phosphorus, -or wake of a ship in the night,--only so with naked eye can we behold -it. But pierced by vision telescopic, it is revealed as the further -side of the Ring of the Cosmos,--dim belt of millions of suns seemingly -massed together like the cells of a living body, yet so seeming only -by reason of their frightful remoteness. Even thus really separated -each from each in the awfulness of the Night of Time,--by silent -profundities of centuries,--by interspaces of thousands and of myriads -of years,--though collectively shaping to love’s desire but one dim soft -sweet phantom,--are those million-swarming memories that make for youth -its luminous dream of beauty. - - - - -Sadness in Beauty - - -The poet who sang that beautiful things bring sadness, named as -beautiful things music and sunset and night, clear skies and transparent -waters. Their sadness he sought to explain by vague soul-memories -of Paradise. Very old-fashioned this explanation; but it contains a -shadowing of truth. For the mysterious sadness associated with the sense -of beauty is certainly not of this existence, but of countless anterior -lives,--and therefore indeed a sadness of reminiscence. - -Elsewhere I try to explain why certain qualities of music, and certain -aspects of sunset produce sadness, and even more than sadness. As -for impressions of night, however, I doubt if the emotion that night -evokes in this nineteenth century can be classed with the sadness that -beauty brings. A wonderful night,--a tropical night, for instance, -lucent and lukewarm, with a new moon in it, curved and yellow like a -ripe banana,--may inspire, among other minor feelings something of -tenderness; but the great dominant emotion evoked by the splendor of the -vision is not sadness. Breaking open the heavens to their highest, night -widens modern thought over the bounds of life and death by the spectacle -of that Infinite whose veil is day. Night also forces remembrance of -the mystery of our tether,--the viewless force that holds us down -to this wretched little ball of a world. And the result is cosmic -emotion--vaster than any sense of the sublime,--drowning all other -emotion,--but nowise akin to the sadness that beauty causes. Anciently -the emotion of night must have been incomparably less voluminous. -Men who believed the sky to be a solid vault, never could have felt, -as we feel it, the stupendous pomp of darkness. And our ever-growing -admiration of those awful astral questions in the Book of Job, is mainly -due to the fact that, with the progress of science, they continue to -make larger and larger appeal to forms of thought and feeling which -never could have entered into the mind of Job. - -But the sadness excited by the beauty of a perfect day, or by the charm -of nature in her brightest moods, is a fact of another kind, and needs -a different explanation. Inherited the feeling must be,--but through -what cumulation of ancestral pain? Why should the tenderness of an -unclouded sky, the soft green sleep of summered valleys, the murmurous -peace of sun-flecked shadows, inspire us with sadness? Why should any -inherited emotion following an æsthetic perception be melancholy rather -than joyous?... Of course I do not refer to the sense of vastness or -permanence or power aroused by the sight of the sea, or by any vision -of sea-like space, or by the majesty of colossal ranges. That is the -feeling of the sublime,--always related to fear. Æsthetic sadness is -related rather to desire. - - * * * * * - -“All beautiful things bring sadness,” is a statement as near to truth -as most general statements; but the sadness and its evolutional history -must vary according to circumstances. The melancholy awakened by the -sight of a beautiful face cannot be identical with that awakened by the -sight of a landscape, by the hearing of music, or by the reading of a -poem. Yet there should be some one emotional element common to æsthetic -sadness,--one general kind of feeling which would help us to solve the -riddle of the melancholy inspired by the sight of beauty in Nature. Such -a common element, I believe, is inherited longing,--inherited dim sense -of loss, shadowed and qualified variously by interrelated feelings. -Different forms of this inheritance would be awakened by different -impressions of the beautiful. In the case of human beauty, the æsthetic -recognition might be toned or shadowed by immemorial inheritance of -pain--pain of longing, and pain of separation from numberless forgotten -beloved. In the case of a color, a melody, an effect of sunshine or of -moonlight, the sense-impressions appealing to æsthetic feeling might -equally appeal to various ancestral memories of pain. The melancholy -given by the sight of a beautiful landscape is certainly a melancholy of -longing,--a sadness massive as vague, because made by the experience of -millions of our dead. - -“The æsthetic feeling for nature in its purity,” declares Sully, “is -a modern growth ... the feeling for nature’s wild solitudes is hardly -older than Rousseau.” Perhaps to many this will seem rather a strong -statement in regard to the races of the West;--it is not true of the -races of the Far East, whose art and poetry yield ancient proof to the -contrary. But no evolutionist would deny that the æsthetic love of -nature has been developed through civilization, and that many abstract -sentiments now involved with it are of very recent origin. Much of the -sadness made in us by the sight of a beautiful landscape would therefore -be of comparatively modern growth, though less modern than some of the -higher qualities of æsthetic pleasure which accompany the emotion. I -surmise it to be mainly the inherited pain of that separation from -Nature which began with the building of walled cities. Possibly there -is blended with it something of incomparably older sorrow--such as the -immemorial mourning of man for the death of summer; but this, and other -feelings inherited from ages of wandering, would revive more especially -in the great vague melancholy that autumn brings into what we still call -our souls. - - * * * * * - -Ever as the world increasing its wisdom increases its sorrow, our -dwellers in cities built up to heaven more and more regret the joys of -humanity’s childhood,--the ancient freedom of forest and peak and plain, -the brightness of mountain water, the cool keen sweetness of the sea’s -breath and the thunder-roll of its eternal epic. And all this regret of -civilization for Nature irretrievably forsaken, may somehow revive in -that great soft dim sadness which the beauty of a landscape makes us -feel. - -In one sense we are certainly wrong when we say that the loveliness of -a scene brings tears to the eyes. It cannot be the loveliness of the -scene;--it is the longing of generations quickening in the hearts of us. -The beauty we speak of has no real existence: the emotion of the dead -alone makes it seem to be,--the emotion of those long-buried millions -of men and women who loved Nature for reasons very much simpler and -older than any æsthetic emotion is. To the windows of the house of life -their phantoms crowd,--like prisoners toward some vision of bright skies -and flying birds, free hills and glimmering streams, beyond the iron -of their bars. They behold their desire of other time,--the vast light -and space of the world, the wind-swept clearness of azure, the hundred -greens of wold and plain, the spectral promise of summits far away. They -hear the shrilling and the whirr of happy winged things, the chorus of -cicada and bird, the lisping and laughing of water, the under-tone of -leafage astir. They know the smell of the season--all sharp sweet odors -of sap, scents of flower and fruitage. They feel the quickening of the -living air,--the thrilling of the great Blue Ghost. - -But all this comes to them, filtered through the bars and veils of their -rebirth, only as dreams of home to hopeless exile,--of child-bliss to -desolate age,--of remembered vision to the blind! - - - - -Parfum de Jeunesse - - -“I remember,”--said an old friend, telling me the romance of his -youth,--“that I could always find her cloak in the cloak-room without a -light, when it was time to take her home. I used to know it in the dark, -because it had the smell of sweet new milk....” - -Which set me somehow to thinking of English dawns, the scent of -hayfields, the fragrance of hawthorn days;--and cluster after cluster -of memories lighted up in succession through a great arc of remembrance -that flashed over half a lifetime even before my friend’s last words -had ceased to sound in my ears. And then recollection smouldered into -revery,--a revery about the riddle of the odor of youth. - - * * * * * - -That quality of the _parfum de jeunesse_ which my friend described is -not uncommon,--though I fancy that it belongs to Northern rather than -to Southern races. It signifies perfect health and splendid vigor. But -there are other and more delicate varieties of the attraction. Sometimes -it may cause you to think of precious gums or spices from the uttermost -tropics; sometimes it is a thin, thin sweetness,--like a ghost of musk. -It is not personal (though physical personality certainly has an odor): -it is the fragrance of a season,--of the springtime of life. But even -as the fragrance of spring, though everywhere a passing delight, varies -with country and climate, so varies the fragrance of youth. - -Whether it be of one sex more than of another were difficult to say. -We notice it chiefly in girls and in children with long hair, probably -because it dwells especially in the hair. But it is always independent -of artifice as the sweetness of the wild violet is. It belongs to the -youth of the savage not less than to the youth of the civilized,--to -the adolescence of the peasant not less than to that of the prince. -It is not found in the sickly and the feeble, but only in perfect -joyous health. Perhaps, like beauty, it may have some vague general -relation to conditions ethical. Individual odors assuredly have,--as the -discrimination of the dog gives witness. - -Evolutionists have suggested that the pleasure we find in the perfume -of a flower may be an emotional reflection from æons enormously -remote, when such odor announced, to forms of ancestral life far lower -than human, the presence of savory food. To what organic memory of -association might be due, upon the same hypothesis, our pleasure in the -perfume of youth? - -Perhaps there were ages in which that perfume had significances more -definite and special than any which we can now attach to it. Like the -pleasure yielded by the fragrance of flowers, the pleasure given by the -healthy fragrance of a young body may be, partly at least, a survival -from some era in which odorous impressions made direct appeal to the -simplest of life-serving impulses. Long dissociated from such possible -primitive relation, odor of blossom and odor of youth alike have now -become for us excitants of the higher emotional life,--of vague but -voluminous and supremely delicate æsthetic feeling. - -Like the feeling awakened by beauty, the pleasure of odor is a pleasure -of remembrance,--is the magical appeal of a sensation to countless -memories of countless lives. And even as the scent of a blossom -evokes the ghosts of feelings experienced in millions of millions of -unrecorded springs,--so the fragrance of youth bestirs within us the -spectral survival of sensations associated with every vernal cycle of -all the human existence that has vanished behind us. - -And this fragrance of fresh being likewise makes invocation to -ideal sentiment,--to parental scarcely less than to amorous -tenderness,--because conjoined through immeasurable time with the charm -and the beauty of childhood. Out of night and death is summoned by its -necromancy more than a shadowy thrill from the rapture of perished -passion,--more than a phantom-reflex from the delight of countless -bridals;--even something also of the ecstasy of pressing lips of caress -to the silky head of the first-born,--faint refluence from the forgotten -joy of myriad millions of buried mothers. - - - - -Azure Psychology - -[Illustration] - - -I - -Least common of the colors given by nature to bird, insect, and -blossom is bright pure blue. Blue flowers are believed to proclaim for -the plant that bears them a longer history of unchecked development -than flowers of any other primary color suggest; and the high cost -of the tint is perhaps hinted by the inability of the horticulturist -to produce blue roses or blue chrysanthemums. Vivid blue appears in -the plumage of some wonderful birds, and on the wings of certain -amazing butterflies--especially tropical butterflies;--but usually -under conditions that intimate a prodigious period of evolutional -specialization. Altogether it would seem that blue was the latest pure -color developed in the evolution of flower and scale and feather; and -there is reason to believe that the power of perceiving blue was not -acquired until after the power of distinguishing red and green and -yellow had already been gained. - -Whether the hypothesis be true or false, it is certainly noteworthy -that, of the primary colors, blue alone has remained, up to the present -time, a color pleasurable in its purest intensity to the vision of -highly civilized races. Bright red, bright green, bright orange, -yellow, or violet, can be used but sparingly in our nineteenth-century -attire and decoration. They have become offensive in their spectral -purity because of the violence of the sensations that they give;--they -remain grateful only to the rudimentary æsthetic feeling of children, -of the totally uncultivated, or of savages. What modern beauty clothes -herself in scarlet, or robes herself in fairy green? We cannot paint -our chambers violet or saffron--the mere idea jars upon our nerves. But -the color of heaven has not ceased to delight us. Sky-blue can still be -worn by our fairest; and the luminous charm of azure ceilings and azure -wall-surfaces--under certain conditions of lighting and dimension--is -still recognized. - -“Nevertheless,” some one may say, “we do not paint the _outside_ of a -building skyblue; and a skyblue façade would be even more disagreeable -than an orange or a crimson façade.” This is true,--but not because the -effect of the color upon large surfaces is necessarily displeasing. -It is true only because vivid blue, unlike other bright colors, is -never associated in our experience of nature with large and opaque -_solidity_. When mountains become blue for us, they also become -ghostly and semi-transparent. Upon a housefront the color must appear -monstrous, because giving the notion of the unnatural,--of a huge blue -dead solidity tangibly proximate. But a blue ceiling, a blue vault, -blue walls of corridors, may suggest the true relation of the color to -depth and transparency, and make for us a grateful illusion of space -and summer-light. Yellow, on the other hand, is a color well adapted to -façades, because associated in memory with the beautiful effect of dying -sunlight over pale broad surfaces. - -But although yellow remains, after blue, the most agreeable of the -primary colors, it cannot often be used for artistic purposes, like -blue, in all its luminous strength. Pale tones of yellow,--especially -creamy tones,--are capable of an immense variety of artistic employment; -but this is not true of the brilliant and burning yellow. Only blue is -always agreeable in its most vivid purity--providing that it be not -used in massive displays so as to suggest the anomaly of blue hardness -and blue opacity.[75] - -In Japan, which may still be called the land of perfect good taste in -chromatics--notwithstanding the temporary apparition of some discords -due to Western influence,--almost any ordinary street-vista tells the -story of the race-experience with color. The general tone of the vista -is given by bluish greys above and dark blues below, sharply relieved -by numerous small details of white and cool yellow. In this perspective -the bluish-greys represent the tiling of roofs and awnings; the dark -blues, shop-draperies; the bright whites, narrow strips of plastered -surface; the pale yellows, mostly smooth naked wood, and glimpses of -rush-mattings. The broader stretches of color are furthermore relieved -and softened by the sprinkling of countless ideographs over draperies -and shop-signs--black, (and sometimes red) against white; white or gold -on blue. Strong yellows, greens, oranges, purples are invisible. In -dress also greys and cool blues rule: when you do happen to see robes -or _hakama_ all of one brilliant color,--worn by children or young -girls,--that color is either a sky-blue, or a violet with only just -enough red in it to kindle the azure,--a rainbow-violet of exquisite -luminosity.[76] - - -II - -But I wish to speak neither of the æsthetic value of blue in relation -to arts and industries, nor of the optical significance of blue as the -product of six hundred and fifty billion oscillations of the luminous -ether per second. I only want to say something about the psychology of -the color,--about its subjective evolutional history. - -Certainly the same apparition of blue will bestir in different -minds different degrees of feeling, and will set in motion, through -memory-revival of unlike experiences, totally dissimilar operations -of fancy. But independently of such psychological variation--mainly -personal and superficial,--there can be no doubt that the color evokes -in the _general_ mind one common quality of pleasurable feeling,--a -vivacious thrill,--a tone of emotional activity unmistakably related to -the higher zones of sentiency and of imagination. - - * * * * * - -In my own case the sight of vivid blue has always been accompanied by an -emotion of vague delight--more or less strong according to the luminous -intensity of the color. And in one experience of travel,--sailing to the -American tropics,--this feeling rose into ecstasy. It was when I beheld -for the first time the grandest vision of blue in this world,--the glory -of the Gulf-Stream: a magical splendor that made me doubt my senses,--a -flaming azure that looked as if a million summer skies had been -condensed into pure fluid color for the making of it. The captain of the -ship leaned over the rail with me; and we both watched the marvellous -sea for a long time in silence. Then he said:-- - - * * * * * - -“Fifteen years ago I took my wife with me on this trip--just after we -were married, it was;--and she wondered at the water. She asked me to -get her a silk dress of the very same color. I tried in ever so many -places; but I never could get just what she wanted till a chance took me -to Canton. I went round the Chinese silk-shops day after day, looking -for that color. It wasn’t easy to find; but I did get it at last. Wasn’t -she glad, though, when I brought it home to her!... She’s got it - yet....” - - * * * * * - -Still, at times, in sleep, I sail southward again over the wonder of -that dazzling surging azure;--then the dream shifts suddenly across -the world, and I am wandering with the Captain through close dim queer -Chinese streets,--vainly seeking a silk of the Blue of the Gulf-Stream. -And it was this memory of tropic days that first impelled me to think -about the reason of the delight inspired by the color. - - -III - -Possibly the wave of pleasurable emotion excited by a glorious vision -of blue is not more complex than the feeling aroused by any massive -display of any other pure color;--but it is higher in the quality of its -complexity. For the ideational elements that blend in the volume of it -include not a few of the noblest,--not a few of those which also enter -into the making of Cosmic Emotion. - -Being the seeming color of the ghost of our planet,--of the breath of -the life of the world,--blue is likewise the color apparent of the -enormity of day and the abyss of the night. So the sensation of it makes -appeal to the ideas of Altitude, of Vastness, and of Profundity;-- - -Also to the idea of Space in Time; for blue is the tint of distance and -of vagueness;-- - -Also to the idea of Motion; for blue is the color of Vanishing and of -Apparition. Peak and vale, bay and promontory, turn blue as we leave -them; and out of blue they grow and define again as we glide homeward. - -And therefore in the volume of feeling awakened in us by the sensation -of blue, there should be something of the emotion associated with -experience of change,--with countless ancestral sorrows of parting. But -if there indeed be any such dim survival, it is utterly whelmed and -lost in that all-radiant emotional inheritance related to Summer and -Warmth,--to the joy of past humanity in the light of cloudless days. - -Still more significant is the fact that although blue is a sacred color, -the dominant tones of the feeling it evokes are gladness and tenderness. -Blue speaks to us of the dead and of the gods, but never of their -awfulness. - - * * * * * - -Now when we reflect that blue is the color of the idea of the divine, -the color pantheistic, the color ethical,--thrilling most deeply into -those structures of thought to which belong our sentiments of reverence -and justice, of duty and of aspiration,--we may wonder why the emotion -it calls up should be supremely gladsome. Is it because that sensuous -race-experience of blue skies,--that measureless joy of the dead in -light and warmth, which has been transmitted to each of us in organic -memory,--is vastly older than the religious idea, and therefore -voluminous enough to drown any ethical feeling indirectly related to the -color-sensation? Partly so, no doubt;--but I will venture another, and a -very simple explanation:-- - - * * * * * - -_All moral pulsations in the wave of inherited feeling which responds to -the impression of blue, belong only to the beautiful and tender aspects -of faith._ - - * * * * * - -And thus much having been ventured, I may presume a little further. - -I imagine that for many of us one of the most powerful elements in -this billow of pleasurable feeling evoked by the vision of blue, _is_ -spiritual, in the fullest ethical meaning of the word;--that under the -fleeting surface-plexus of personal emotion empirically associated -with the color, pulses like a tide the transmitted religious emotion -of unnumbered ages;--and that, quickening and vivifying all inherited -sense of blue as beauty, is the inherited lucent rapture of blue as the -splendor mystical,--as the color of the everlasting Peace. Something -of all human longing for all the Paradises ever imagined,--of all -pre-existent trust in the promise of reunion after death,--of all -expired dreams of unending youth and bliss,--may be revived for us, -more or less faintly, in this thrill of the delight of azure. Even -as through the jewel-radiance of the Tropic Stream pass undulations -from the vaster deep,--with their sobbings and whisperings, their -fugitive drift and foam,--so, through the emotion evoked by the vision -of luminous blue, there may somehow quiver back to us out of the -Infinite--(multitudinous like the billion ether-shiverings that make the -blue sensation of a moment)--something of all the aspirations of the -ancient faiths, and the power of the vanished gods, and the passion and -the beauty of all the prayer ever uttered by lips of man. - -FOOTNOTES: - -[75] Blue jewels, blue eyes, blue flowers delight us; but in these the -color accompanies either transparency or visible softness. It is perhaps -because of the incongruity between hard opacity and blue that the sight -of a book in sky-blue binding is unendurable. I can imagine nothing more -atrocious. - -[76] This essay was written several years ago. During 1897 I noticed for -the first time since my arrival in Japan a sprinkling of dark greens -and light-yellows in the fashions of the season; but the general tone -of costume was little affected by these exceptions to older taste. The -light-yellow appeared only in some girdles of children. - - - - -A Serenade - -[Illustration] - - -I - -“Broken” were too abrupt a word. My sleep was not broken, but suddenly -melted and swept away by a flow of music from the night without,--music -that filled me with expectant ecstasy by the very first gush of its -sweetness: a serenade,--a playing of flutes and mandolines. - -The flutes had dove-tones; and they cooed and moaned and purled;--and -the mandolines throbbed through the liquid plaint of them, like a -beating of hearts. The players I could not see: they were standing in -heavy shadows flung into the street by a tropical moon,--shadows of -plantain and of tamarind. - -Nothing in all the violet gloom moved but that music, and the -fire-flies,--great bright slow sparks of orange and of emerald. The -warm air held its breath; the plumes of the palms were still; and the -haunting circle of the sea, blue even beneath the moon, lay soundless as -a circle of vapor. - - * * * * * - -Flutes and mandolines--a Spanish melody--nothing more. Yet it seemed as -if the night itself were speaking, or, out of the night some passional -life long since melted into Nature’s mystery, but continuing to haunt -the tepid, odorous, sparkling darkness of that strange world, which -sleeps under the sun, and wakens only to the stars. And its utterance -was the ghostly reiteration of rapture that had been, and never again -could be,--an utterance of infinite tenderness and of immeasurable -regret. - -Never before had I felt how the simplest of music could express what -no other art is able even to suggest;--never before had I known -the astonishing possibilities of melody without ornament, without -artifice,--yet with a charm as bewildering, as inapprehensible, as the -Greek perception of the grace supreme. - -Now nothing in perfect art can be only voluptuous; and this music, -in despite of its caress, was immeasurably, ineffably sad. And -the exquisite blending of melancholy with passion in a motive so -simple,--one low long cooing motive, over and over again repeated, like -a dove’s cry,--had a _strangeness_ of beauty like the musical thought -of a vanished time,--one rare survival, out of an era more warmly human -than our own, of some lost art of melody. - - -II - -The music hushed, and left me dreaming, and vainly trying to explain the -emotion that it had made. Of one thing only I felt assured,--that the -mystery was of other existences than mine. - -For the living present, I reflected, is the whole dead past. Our -pleasures and our pains alike are but products of evolution,--vast -complexities of sentiency created by experience of vanished beings -more countless than the sands of a myriad seas. All personality is -recombination; and all emotions are of the dead. Yet some seem to us -more ghostly than others,--partly because of their greater relative -mystery, partly because of the immense power of the phantom waves -composing them. Among pleasurable forms, the ghostliest are the emotion -of first love, the emotion following the perception of the sublime in -nature--of terrible beauty,--and the emotion of music. Why should they -so be? Probably because the influences that arouse them thrill furthest -into our forgotten past. Frightful as the depth of the abyss of Space -is the depth of one thinking life,--measureless even by millions of -ages;--and who may divine how profoundly in certain personalities the -mystery can be moved. We only know that the deeper the thrilling, the -heavier the wave responding, and the weirder the result,--until those -profundities are reached of which a single surge brings instant death, -or makes perpetual ruin of the delicate structures of thought. - -Now any music that makes powerful appeal to the emotion of love, -awakening the passional latency of the past within us, must inevitably -revive dead pain not less than dead delight. Pain of the conquest of -will by a mystery resistless and pitiless, the torture of doubt, the -pangs of rivalry, the terror of impermanency,--shadows of these and -many another sorrow have had their part in the toning of that psychical -inheritance which makes at once love’s joy and love’s anguish, and grows -forever from birth to birth. - -And thus it may happen that a child, innocent of passion or of real -pain, is moved even to tears by music uttering either. Unknowingly he -feels in that utterance a shadowing of the sorrow of numberless vanished -lives. - - -III - -But it seemed to me that the extraordinary emotion awakened by that -tropical melody needed an explanation more qualitative than the -explanation above attempted. I felt sure that the dead past to which -the music had made appeal must have been a special past,--that some -particular class or group of emotional memories had been touched. Yet -what class?--what group? For the time being, I could not even venture a -guess. - -Long afterwards, however, some chance happening revived for me with -surprising distinctness the memory of the serenade;--and simultaneously, -like a revelation, came the certainty that the whole spell of the -melody--all its sadness and all its sweetness--had been supremely and -uniquely _feminine_. - ---“Assuredly,” I reflected, as the new conviction grew upon me, “the -primal source of all human tenderness has been the Eternal Feminine.... -Yet how should melody uttering only the soul of woman have been composed -by man, and bestir within man this innominable quickening of emotional -reminiscence?” - -The answer shaped itself at once,-- - ---“_Every mortal man has been many millions of times a woman._” - - * * * * * - -Undoubtedly in either sex survives the sum of the feelings and of -the memories of both. But some rare experience may appeal at times -to the feminine element of personality alone,--to one half only of -the phantom-world of Self,--leaving the other hemisphere dormant and -unillumed. And such experience had found embodiment in the marvellous -melody of the serenade which I had heard. - -That tremulous sweetness was never masculine; that passional sadness -never was of man:--unisexual both and inseparably blended into a single -miracle of tone-beauty. Echoing far into the mystery of my own past, -the enchantment of that tone had startled from their sleep of ages -countless buried loves, and set the whole delicate swarm fluttering -in some delicious filmy agony of revival,--set them streaming and -palpitating through the Night of Time,--like those myriads eddying -forever through the gloom of the vision of Dante. - - * * * * * - -They died with the music and the moon,--but not utterly. Whenever in -dream the memory of that melody returns, again I feel the long soft -shuddering of the dead,--again I feel the faint wings spread and thrill, -responsive to the cooing of those spectral flutes, to the throbbing of -those shadowy mandolines. And the elfish ecstasy of their thronging -awakes me; but always with my wakening the delight passes, and in the -dark the sadness only lingers,--unutterable,--infinite...! - - - - -A Red Sunset - -[Illustration] - - -I - -The most stupendous apparition of red that I ever saw was a tropical -sunset in a cloudless sky,--a sunset such as can be witnessed only -during exceptional conditions of atmosphere. It began with a flaming of -orange from horizon to zenith; and this quickly deepened to a fervid -vermilion, through which the crimson disk glared like the cinder of a -burnt-out star. Sea, peak, and palm caught the infernal glow; and I -became conscious of a vague strange horror within myself,--a sense of -distress like that which precedes a nightmare. I could not then explain -the feeling;--I only knew that the color had aroused it. - -But how aroused it?--I later asked myself. Common theories about the -ugly sensation of bright red could not explain for me the weirdness of -that experience. As for the sanguine associations of the color, they -could interpret little in my case; for the sight of blood had never -affected my nerves in the least. I thought that the theory of psychical -inheritance might furnish some explanation;--but how could it meet the -fact that a color, which the adult finds insufferable, continues to -delight the child? - -All ruddy tones, however, are not unpleasant to refined sensibility: -some are quite the reverse,--as, for example, the various tender colors -called pink or rose. These appeal to very agreeable kinds of sensuous -experience: they suggest delicacy and softness; they awaken qualities of -feeling totally different from those excited by vermilion or scarlet. -Pink, being the tint of the blossoming of flowers and the blossoming -of youth,--of the ripeness of fruit and the ripeness of flesh, is -ever associated with impressions of fragrance and sweetness, and with -memories of beautiful lips and cheeks. - -No: it is only the pure brilliant red, the fervid red, that arouses -sinister feeling. Experience with this color seems to have been the -same even in societies evolved under conditions utterly unlike those of -our own history,--Japan being a significant example. The more refined -and humane a civilization becomes, the less are displays of the color -tolerated in its cultivated circles. But how are we to account for that -pleasure which bright red still gives to the children of the people who -detest it? - - -II - -Many sensations which delighted us as children, prove to us either -insipid or offensive in adult life. Why? Because there have grown up -with our growth feelings which, though now related to them, were dormant -during childhood; ideas now associated with them, but undeveloped during -childhood; and experiences connected with them, never imagined in -childhood. - -For the mind, at our birth, is even less developed than the body; and -its full ripening demands very much more time than is needed for the -perfect bodily growth. Both by his faults and by his virtues the child -resembles the savage, because the instincts and the emotions of the -primitive man are the first to mature within him;--and they are the -first to mature in the individual because they were the first evolved in -the history of the race, being the most necessary to self-maintenance. -That in later adult life they take a very inferior place is because the -nobler mental and moral qualities--comparatively recent products of -social discipline and civilized habit--have at last gained massiveness -enough to dominate them under normal conditions;--have become like -powerful new senses upon which the primitive emotional nature learns to -depend for guidance. - -All emotions are inheritances; but the higher, because in evolutional -order the latest, develop only with the complete unfolding of the brain. -Some, ethically considered the very loftiest, are said to develop only -in old age,--to which they impart a particular charm. Other faculties -also of a high order, chiefly æsthetic, would seem in the average of -cases to mature in middle life. And to this period of personal evolution -probably belongs the finer sense of beauty in color,--a much simpler -faculty than the ethical sense, though possibly related to it in ways -unsuspected. - -Vivid colors appeal to the rudimentary æsthetic sense of our children, -as they do to the æsthetic sense of savages; but the civilized -adult dislikes most of the very vivid colors: they exasperate his -nerves like an excessive crash of brass and drums during a cheap -orchestral performance. Cultured vision especially shrinks from a -strong blaze of red. Only the child delights in vermilion and scarlet. -Growing up he gradually learns to think of what we call “loud red” -as vulgar, and to dislike it much more than did his less delicate -ancestors of the preceding century. Education helps him to explain -why he thinks it vulgar, but not to explain why he _feels_ it to be -unpleasant,--independently of the question whether it tires his eyes. - - -III - -And now I come back to the subject of that tropical sunset. - -Even in the common æsthetic emotion excited by the spectacle of any -fine sunset, there are elements of feeling ancient as the race,--dim -melancholy, dim fear, inherited from ages when the dying of the day -was ever watched with sadness and foreboding. After that mighty -glow, the hours of primeval horror,--the fear of blackness, the -fear of nocturnal foes, the fear of ghosts. These, and other weird -feelings,--independently of the physical depression following the -withdrawal of sunlight,--would by inheritance become emotionally related -to visions of sundown; and the primitive horror would at last be -evolutionally transmuted to one elemental tone of the modern sublime. -But the spectacle of a vast _crimson_ sunset would awaken feelings -less vague than the sense of the sublime,--feelings of a definitely -sinister kind. The very color itself would make appeal to special -kinds of inherited feelings, simply because of its relation to awful -spectacles,--the glare of the volcano-summit, the furious vermilion of -lava, the raging of forest-fires, the overglow of cities kindling in the -track of war, the smouldering of ruin, the blazing of funeral-pyres. And -in this lurid race-memory of fire as destroyer,--as the “ravening ghost” -of Northern fancy,--there would mingle a vague distress evolved through -ancestral experience of _crimson heat in relation to pain_,--an organic -horror. And the like tremendous color in celestial phenomena would -revive also inherited terror related of old to ideas of the portentous -and of the wrath of gods. - - * * * * * - -Probably the largest element of the unpleasant feeling aroused in man -by this angry color has been made by the experience of the race with -fire. But in even the most vivid red there is always some suggestion -of passion, and of the tint of blood. Inherited emotion related to -the sight of death must be counted among the elements of the sinister -feeling that the hue excites. Doubtless for the man, as for the bull, -the emotional wave called up by displays of violent red, is mostly the -creation of impressions and of tendencies accumulated through all the -immense life of the race; and, as in the old story of Thomas the Rhymer, -we can say of our only real Fairy-land, our ghostly past,-- - - ... “_A’ the blude that’s shed on earth - Rins through the springs o’ that Countrie._” - -But those very associations that make burning red unbearable to modern -nerves must have already been enormously old when it first became the -color of pomp and luxury. How then should such associations affect us -unpleasantly now? - -I would answer that the emotional suggestions of the color continued -to be pleasurable for the adult, as they still are for the child, -only while they remained more vague and much less voluminous than at -present. Becoming intensified in the modern brain, they gradually -ceased to yield pleasure,--somewhat as warmth increased to the degree -of heat ceases to be pleasurable. Still later they became painful; and -their actual painfulness exposes the fundamentally savage nature of -those sensations of splendor and power which the color once called into -play. And the intensification of the feeling evoked by red has not been -due merely to later accumulation of inherited impressions, but also -to the growth and development of emotions essentially antithetical to -ideas of violence and pain, and yet inseparable from them. The moral -sensibility of an era that has condemned not a few of the amusements of -our forebears to the limbo of old barbarities,--the humanity of an age -that refuses to believe in a hell of literal fire, that prohibits every -brutal sport, that compels kindness to animals,--is offended by the -cruel suggestiveness of the color. But within the slowly-unfolding brain -of the child, this modern sensibility is not evolved;--and until it has -been evolved, with the aid of experience and of education, the feeling -aroused by such a color as vivid scarlet will naturally continue to be -pleasurable rather than painful. - - -IV - -While thus trying to explain why a color dignified as imperial in -other centuries should have become offensive in our own, I found -myself wondering whether most of our actual refinements might not in -like manner become the vulgarities of a future age. Our standards -of taste and our ideals of beauty can have only a value relative to -conditions which are constantly changing. Real and ideal alike are -transitory,--mere apparitional undulations in the flux of the perpetual -Becoming. Perhaps the finest ethical or æsthetical sentiment of -to-day will manifest itself in another era only as some extraordinary -psychological atavism,--some rare individual reversion to the conditions -of a barbarous past. - -What in the meantime would be the fate of sensations that are even -now becoming intolerable? Any faculty, mental or physical, however -previously developed by evolutional necessities, would have a tendency -to dwindle and disappear from the moment that it ceased to be either -useful or pleasurable. Continuance of the power to perceive red would -depend upon the possible future usefulness of that power to the race. -Not without suggestiveness in this connection may be the fact that it -represents the lowest rate of those ether-oscillations which produce -color. Perhaps our increasing dislike to it indicates that power to -distinguish it will eventually pass away--pass away in a sort of -Daltonism at the inferior end of the color-scale. Such visual loss would -probably be more than compensated by superior coincident specializations -of retinal sensibility. A more highly organized generation might -enjoy wonders of color now unimaginable, and yet never be able to -perceive red,--not, at least, that red whose sensation is the spectral -smouldering of the agonies and the furies of our evolutional past, the -haunting of a horror innominable, immeasurable,--enormous phantom-menace -of expired human pain. - - - - -Frisson - -[Illustration] - - -Some there may be who have never felt the thrill of a human touch; but -surely these are few! Most of us in early childhood discover strange -differences in physical contact;--we find that some caresses soothe, -while others irritate; and we form in consequence various unreasoning -likes and antipathies. With the ripening of youth we seem to feel these -distinctions more and more keenly,--until the fateful day in which -we learn that a certain feminine touch communicates an unspeakable -shiver of delight,--exercises a witchcraft that we try to account for -by theories of the occult and the supernatural. Age may smile at these -magical fancies of youth; and nevertheless, in spite of much science, -the imagination of the lover is probably nearer to truth than is the -wisdom of the disillusioned. - -We seldom permit ourselves in mature life to think very seriously about -such experiences. We do not deny them; but we incline to regard them as -nervous idiosyncrasies. We scarcely notice that even in the daily act -of shaking hands with persons of either sex, sensations may be received -which no physiology can explain. - -I remember the touch of many hands,--the quality of each clasp, the -sense of physical sympathy or repulsion aroused. Thousands I have -indeed forgotten,--probably because their contact told me nothing in -particular; but the strong experiences I fully recollect. I found that -their agreeable or disagreeable character was often quite independent -of the moral relation: but in the most extraordinary case that I can -recall--(a strangely fascinating personality with the strangest of -careers as poet, soldier, and refugee)--the moral and the physical charm -were equally powerful and equally rare. “Whenever I shake hands with -that man,” said to me one of many who had yielded to his spell, “I feel -a warm shock go all through me, like a glow of summer.” Even at this -moment when I think of that dead hand, I can feel it reached out to me -over the space of twenty years and of many a thousand miles. Yet it was -a hand that had killed.... - - * * * * * - -These, with other memories and reflections, came to me just after -reading a criticism on Mr. Bain’s evolutional interpretation of the -thrill of pleasure sometimes given by the touch of the human skin. The -critic asked why a satin cushion kept at a temperature of about 98° -would not give the same thrill; and the question seemed to me unfair -because, in the very passage criticised, Mr. Bain had sufficiently -suggested the reason. Taking him to have meant--as he must have -meant,--not that the thrill is given by any kind of warmth and softness, -but only by the _peculiar_ warmth and softness of the human skin, his -interpretation can scarcely be contested by a sarcasm. A satin cushion -at a temperature of about 98° could not give the same sensation as that -given by the touch of the human skin for reasons even much more simple -than Mr. Bain implied,--since it is totally different from the human -skin in substance, in texture, and in the all-important fact that it is -not alive, but dead. Of course warmth and softness in themselves are -not enough to produce the thrill of pleasure considered by Mr. Bain: -under easily imaginable circumstances they may produce something of -the reverse. Smoothness has quite as much to do with the pleasure of -touch as either softness or warmth can have; yet a moist or a very dry -smoothness may be disagreeable. Again, cool smoothness in the human -skin is perhaps even more agreeable than warm smoothness; yet there is -a cool smoothness common to many lower forms of life which causes a -shudder. Whatever be those qualities making pleasurable the touch of a -hand, for example, they are probably very many in combination, and they -are certainly peculiar to the _living_ touch. No possible artificial -combination of warmth and smoothness and softness combined could excite -the same quality of pleasure that certain human touches give,--although, -as other psychologists than Mr. Bain have observed, it may give rise to -a fainter kind of agreeable feeling. - -A special sensation can be explained only by special conditions. Some -philosophers would explain the conditions producing this pleasurable -thrill, or _frisson_, as mainly subjective; others, as mainly -objective. Is it not most likely that either view contains truth;--that -the physical cause must be sought in some quality, definable or -indefinable, attaching to a particular touch; and that the cause of the -coincident emotional phenomena should be looked for in the experience, -not of the individual, but of the race? - - * * * * * - -Remembering that there can be no two tangible things exactly alike,--no -two blades of grass, or drops of water, or grains of sand,--it ought not -to seem incredible that the touch of one person should have power to -impart a sensation different from any sensation producible by the touch -of any other person. That such difference could neither be estimated nor -qualified would not necessarily imply unimportance or even feebleness. -Among the voices of the thousands of millions of human beings in this -world, there are no two precisely the same;--yet how much to the ear -and to the heart of wife or mother, child or lover, may signify the -unspeakably fine difference by which each of a billion voices varies -from every other! Not even in thought, much less in words, can such -distinction be specified; but who is unfamiliar with the fact and with -its immense relative importance? - -That any two human skins should be absolutely alike is not possible. -There are individual variations perceptible even to the naked eye,--for -has not Mr. Galton taught us that the visible finger-marks of no two -persons are the same? But in addition to differences visible--whether -to the naked eye, or only under the microscope, there must be other -differences of quality depending upon constitutional vigor, upon nervous -and glandular activities, upon relative chemical composition of tissue. -Whether touch be a sense delicate enough to discern such differences, -would be, of course, a question for psycho-physics to decide,--and -a question not simply of magnitudes, but of qualities of sensation. -Perhaps it is not yet even legitimate to suppose that, just as by ear we -can distinguish the qualitative differences of a million voices, so by -touch we might be able to distinguish qualitative differences of surface -scarcely less delicate. Yet it is worth while here to remark that the -tingle or shiver of pleasure excited in us by certain qualities of -voice, very much resembles the thrill given sometimes by the touch of a -hand. Is it not possible that there may be recognized, in the particular -quality of a living skin, something not less uniquely attractive than -the indeterminable charm of what we call a bewitching voice? - -Perhaps it is not impossible. But in the character of the _frisson_ -itself there is a hint that the charm of the touch provoking it may be -due to something much more deeply vital than any physical combination -of smoothness, warmth and softness,--to something, as Mr. Bain has -suggested, electric or magnetic. Human electricity is no fiction: -every living body,--even a plant,--is to some degree electrical; and -the electric conditions of no two organisms would be exactly the same. -Can the thrill be partly accounted for by some individual peculiarity -of these conditions? May there not be electrical differences of touch -appreciable by delicate nervous systems,--differences subtle as those -infinitesimal variations of timbre by which every voice of a million -voices is known from every other? - -Such a theory might be offered in explanation of the fact that the -slightest touch of a particular woman, for example, will cause a shock -of pleasure to men whom the caresses of other and fairer women would -leave indifferent. But it could not serve to explain why the same -contact should produce no effect upon some persons, while causing -ecstasy in others. No purely physical theory can interpret all the -mystery of the _frisson_. A deeper explanation is needed;--and I imagine -that one is suggested by the phenomenon of “love _at first sight_.” - -The power of a woman to inspire love at first sight does not depend -upon some attraction visible to the common eye. It depends partly upon -something objective which only certain eyes can see; and it depends -partly upon some thing which no mortal can see,--_the psychical -composition of the subject of the passion_. Nobody can pretend to -explain in detail the whole enigma of first love. But a general -explanation is suggested by evolutional philosophy,--namely, that the -attraction depends upon an inherited individual susceptibility to -special qualities of feminine influence, and subjectively represents -a kind of superindividual recognition,--a sudden wakening of that -inherited composite memory which is more commonly called “passional -affinity.” Certainly if first love be evolutionally explicable, it means -the perception by the lover of some thing differentiating the beloved -from all other women,--something corresponding to an inherited ideal -within himself, previously latent, but suddenly lighted and defined by -result of that visual impression. - -And like sight, though perhaps less deeply, do other of our senses -reach into the buried past. A single strain of melody, the sweetness -of a single voice--what thrill immeasurable will either make in the -fathomless sleep of ancestral memory! Again, who does not know that -speechless delight bestirred in us on rare bright days by something -odorous in the atmosphere,--enchanting, but indefinable? The first -breath of spring, the blowing of a mountain breeze, a south wind from -the sea may bring this emotion,--emotion overwhelming, yet nameless as -its cause,--an ecstasy formless and transparent as the air. Whatever -be the odor, diluted to very ghostliness, that arouses this delight, -the delight itself is too weirdly voluminous to be explained by any -memory-revival of merely individual experience. More probably it is -older even than human life,--reaches deeper into the infinite blind -depth of dead pleasure and pain. - -Out of that ghostly abyss also must come the thrill responding within -us to a living touch,--touch electrical of man, questioning the -heart,--touch magical of woman, invoking memory of caresses given by -countless delicate and loving hands long crumbled into dust. Doubt it -not!--the touch that makes a thrill within you is a touch that you have -felt before,--sense-echo of forgotten intimacies in many unremembered -lives! - - - - -Vespertina Cognitio - -[Illustration] - - -I - -I doubt if there be any other form of terror that even approaches -the fear of the supernatural, and more especially the fear of the -supernatural in dreams. Children know this fear both by night and by -day; but the adult is not likely to suffer from it except in slumber, -or under the most abnormal conditions of mind produced by illness. -Reason, in our healthy waking hours, keeps the play of ideas far above -those deep-lying regions of inherited emotion where dwell the primitive -forms of terror. But even as known to the adult in dreams only, there -is no waking fear comparable to this fear,--none so deep and yet so -vague,--none so unutterable. The indefiniteness of the horror renders -verbal expression of it impossible; yet the suffering is so intense -that, if prolonged beyond a certain term of seconds, it will kill. -And the reason is that such fear is not of the individual life: it -is infinitely more massive than any personal experience could account -for;--it is prenatal, ancestral fear. Dim it necessarily is, because -compounded of countless blurred millions of inherited fears. But for the -same reason, its depth is abysmal. - -The training of the mind under civilization has been directed toward -the conquest of fear in general, and--excepting that ethical quality -of the feeling which belongs to religion--of the supernatural in -particular. Potentially in most of us this fear exists; but its sources -are well-guarded; and outside of sleep it can scarcely perturb any -vigorous mind except in the presence of facts so foreign to all relative -experience that the imagination is clutched before the reason can -grapple with the surprise. - -Once only, after the period of childhood, I knew this emotion in a -strong form. It was remarkable as representing the vivid projection of a -dream-fear into waking consciousness; and the experience was peculiarly -tropical. In tropical countries, owing to atmospheric conditions, the -oppression of dreams is a more serious suffering than with us, and is -perhaps most common during the siesta. All who can afford it pass their -nights in the country; but for obvious reasons the majority of colonists -must be content to take their siesta, and its consequences, in town. - -The West-Indian siesta does not refresh like that dreamless midday nap -which we enjoy in Northern summers. It is a stupefaction rather than -a sleep,--beginning with a miserable feeling of weight at the base of -the brain: it is a helpless surrender of the whole mental and physical -being to the overpressure of light and heat. Often it is haunted by ugly -visions, and often broken by violent leaps of the heart. Occasionally -it is disturbed also by noises never noticed at other times. When the -city lies all naked to the sun, stripped by noon of every shadow, and -empty of wayfarers, the silence becomes amazing. In that silence the -papery rustle of a palm-leaf, or the sudden sound of a lazy wavelet -on the beach,--like the clack of a thirsty tongue,--comes immensely -magnified to the ear. And this noon, with its monstrous silence, is for -the black people the hour of ghosts. Everything alive is senseless with -the intoxication of light;--even the woods drowse and droop in their -wrapping of lianas, drunk with sun.... - -Out of the siesta I used to be most often startled, not by sounds, -but by something which I can describe only as a sudden shock of -thought. This would follow upon a peculiar internal commotion caused, -I believe, by some abnormal effect of heat upon the lungs. A slow -suffocating sensation would struggle up into the twilight-region between -half-consciousness and real sleep, and there bestir the ghastliest -imaginings,--fancies and fears of living burial. These would be -accompanied by a voice, or rather the idea of a voice, mocking and -reproaching:--“‘_Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is -for the eyes to behold the sun._’... Outside it is day,--tropical -day,--primeval day! And you sleep!!... ‘_Though a man live many years -and rejoice in them all, yet--_’ ... Sleep on!--all this splendor will -be the same when your eyes are dust!... ‘_Yet let him remember the days -of darkness_;--FOR THEY SHALL BE MANY!’” - - * * * * * - -How often, with that phantom crescendo in my ears, have I leaped in -terror from the hot couch, to peer through the slatted shutters at the -enormous light without--silencing, mesmerizing;--then dashed cold water -over my head, and staggered back to the scorching mattress, again to -drowse, again to be awakened by the same voice, or by the trickling of -my own perspiration--a feeling not always to be distinguished from that -caused by the running of a centipede! And how I used to long for the -night, with its Cross of the South! Not because the night ever brought -coolness to the city, but because it brought relief from the _weight_ of -that merciless sunfire. For the feeling of such light is the feeling of -a deluge of something ponderable,--something that drowns and dazzles and -burns and numbs all at the same time, and suggests the idea of liquified -electricity. - - * * * * * - -There are times, however, when the tropical heat seems only to thicken -after sunset. On the mountains the nights are, as a rule, delightful -the whole year round. They are even more delightful on the coast facing -the trade-winds; and you may sleep there in a seaward chamber, caressed -by a warm, strong breeze,--a breeze that plays upon you not by gusts -or whiffs, but with a steady ceaseless blowing,--the great fanning -wind-current of the world’s whirling. But in the towns of the other -coast--nearly all situated at the base of wooded ranges cutting off -the trade-breeze,--the humid atmosphere occasionally becomes at night -something nameless,--something worse than the air of an overheated -conservatory. Sleep in such a medium is apt to be visited by nightmare -of the most atrocious kind. - -My personal experience was as follows:-- - - -II - -I was making a tour of the island with a half-breed guide; and we had -to stop for one night in a small leeward-coast settlement, where we -found accommodation at a sort of lodging-house kept by an aged widow. -There were seven persons only in the house that night,--the old lady, -her two daughters, two colored female-servants, myself and my guide. We -were given a single-windowed room upstairs, rather small,--otherwise a -typical, Creole bedroom, with bare clean floor, some heavy furniture -of antique pattern, and a few rocking-chairs. There was in one corner -a bracket supporting a sort of household shrine--what the Creoles call -a _chapelle_. The shrine contained a white image of the Virgin before -which a tiny light was floating in a cup of oil. By colonial custom -your servant, while travelling with you, sleeps either in the same room, -or before the threshold; and my man simply lay down on a mat beside the -huge four-pillared couch assigned to me, and almost immediately began -to snore. Before getting into bed, I satisfied myself that the door was -securely fastened. - - * * * * * - -The night stifled;--the air seemed to be coagulating. The single large -window, overlooking a garden, had been left open,--but there was no -movement in that atmosphere. Bats--very large bats,--flew soundlessly -in and out;--one actually fanning my face with its wings as it circled -over the bed. Heavy scents of ripe fruit--nauseously sweet--rose -from the garden, where palms and plantains stood still as if made of -metal. From the woods above the town stormed the usual night-chorus of -tree-frogs, insects, and nocturnal birds,--a tumult not to be accurately -described by any simile, but suggesting, through numberless sharp -tinkling tones, the fancy of a wide slow cataract of broken glass. I -tossed and turned on the hot hard bed, vainly trying to find one spot -a little cooler than the rest. Then I rose, drew a rocking-chair to -the window and lighted a cigar. The smoke hung motionless; after each -puff, I had to blow it away. My man had ceased to snore. The bronze of -his naked breast--shining with moisture under the faint light of the -shrine-lamp,--showed no movement of respiration. He might have been a -corpse. The heavy heat seemed always to become heavier. At last, utterly -exhausted, I went back to bed, and slept. - - * * * * * - -It must have been well after midnight when I felt the first vague -uneasiness,--_the suspicion_,--that precedes a nightmare. I was -half-conscious, dream-conscious of the actual,--knew myself in that -very room,--wanted to get up. Immediately the uneasiness grew into -terror, because I found that I could not move. Something unutterable in -the air was mastering will. I tried to cry out, and my utmost effort -resulted only in a whisper too low for any one to hear. Simultaneously -I became aware of a Step ascending the stair,--a muffled heaviness; and -the real nightmare began,--the horror of the ghastly magnetism that -held voice and limb,--the hopeless will-struggle against dumbness and -impotence. The stealthy Step approached, but with lentor malevolently -measured,--slowly, slowly, as if the stairs were miles deep. It -gained the threshold,--waited. Gradually then, and without sound, the -locked door opened; and the Thing entered, bending as it came,--a -thing robed,--feminine,--reaching to the roof,--not to be looked at! -A floor-plank creaked as It neared the bed;--and then--with a frantic -effort--I woke, bathed in sweat; my heart beating as if it were going -to burst. The shrine-light had died: in the blackness I could see -nothing; but I thought I heard that Step retreating. I certainly heard -the plank creak again. With the panic still upon me, I was actually -unable to stir. The wisdom of striking a match occurred to me, but I -dared not yet rise. Presently, as I held my breath to listen, a new -wave of black fear passed through me; for I heard moanings,--long -nightmare moanings,--moanings that seemed to be answering each other -from two different rooms below. And then, close to me, my guide began to -moan,--hoarsely, hideously. I cried to him:-- - -“Louis!--Louis!” - -We both sat up at once. I heard him panting, and I knew that he was -fumbling for his cutlass in the dark. Then, in a voice husky with fear, -he asked:-- - -“_Missié, ess ou tanne?_” [Monsieur, est-ce que vous entendez?] - -The moaners continued to moan,--always in crescendo: then there were -sudden screams,--“_Madame!_”--“_Manzell!_”--and running of bare feet, -and sounds of lamps being lighted, and, at last, a general clamor of -frightened voices. I rose, and groped for the matches. The moans and the -clamor ceased. - -“_Missié_,” my man asked again, “_ess ou tè oué y?_” [Monsieur, est-ce -que vous l’avez vue?] - ---“_Ça ou le di?_” [Qu’est-ce que vous voulez dire?] I responded in -bewilderment, as my fingers closed on the match-box. - ---“_Fenm-là?_” he answered.... THAT WOMAN? - -The question shocked me into absolute immobility. Then I wondered if I -could have understood. But he went on in his patois, as if talking to -himself:-- - ---“Tall, tall--high like this room, that Zombi. When She came the floor -cracked. I heard--I saw.” - -After a moment, I succeeded in lighting a candle, and I went to the -door. It was still locked,--double-locked. No human being could have -entered through the high window. - ---“Louis!” I said, without believing what I said,--“you have been only -dreaming.” - ---“Missié,” he answered, “it was no dream. _She has been in all the -rooms, touching people!_” - -I said,-- - ---“That is foolishness! See!--the door is double-locked.” - -Louis did not even look at the door, but responded:-- - ---“Door locked, door not locked, Zombi comes and goes.... I do not like -this house.... Missié, leave that candle burning!” - -He uttered the last phrase imperatively, without using the respectful -_souplé_--just as a guide speaks at an instant of common danger; and -his tone conveyed to me the contagion of his fear. Despite the candle, -I knew for one moment the sensation of nightmare outside of sleep! The -coincidences stunned reason; and the hideous primitive fancy fitted -itself, like a certitude, to the explanation of cause and effect. -The similarity of my vision and the vision of Louis, the creaking of -the floor heard by us both, the visit of the nightmare to every room -in succession,--these formed a more than unpleasant combination of -evidence. I tried the planking with my foot in the place where I -thought I had seen the figure: it uttered the very same loud creak that -I had heard before. “_Ça pa ka sam révé_,” said Louis. No!--that was not -like dreaming. I left the candle burning, and went back to bed--not to -sleep, but to think. Louis lay down again, with his hand on the hilt of -his cutlass. - - * * * * * - -I thought for a long time. All was now silent below. The heat was at -last lifting; and occasional whiffs of cooler air from the garden -announced the wakening of a land-breeze. Louis, in spite of his recent -terror, soon began to snore again. Then I was startled by hearing a -plank creak--quite loudly,--the same plank that I had tried with my -foot. This time Louis did not seem to hear it. There was nothing there. -It creaked twice more,--and I understood. The intense heat first, and -the change of temperature later, had been successively warping and -unwarping the wood so as to produce those sounds. In the state of -dreaming, which is the state of imperfect sleep, noises may be audible -enough to affect imagination strongly,--and may startle into motion a -long procession of distorted fancies. At the same time it occurred to me -that the almost concomitant experiences of nightmare in the different -rooms could be quite sufficiently explained by the sickening atmospheric -oppression of the hour. - -There still remained the ugly similitude of the two dreams to be -accounted for; and a natural solution of this riddle also, I was able -to find after some little reflection. The coincidence had certainly -been startling; but the similitude was only partial. That which my -guide had seen in his nightmare was a familiar creation of West-Indian -superstition--probably of African origin. But the shape that I had -dreamed about used to vex my sleep in childhood,--a phantom created for -me by the impression of a certain horrible Celtic story which ought not -to have been told to any child blessed, or cursed, with an imagination. - - -III - -Musing on this experience led me afterwards to think about the meaning -of that fear which we call “the fear of darkness,” and yet is not really -fear of darkness. Darkness, as a simple condition, never could have -originated the feeling,--a feeling that must have preceded any definite -idea of ghosts by thousands of ages. The inherited, instinctive fear, -as exhibited by children, is not a fear of darkness in itself, but of -indefinable danger associated with darkness. Evolutionally explained, -this dim but voluminous terror would have for its primal element the -impressions created by real experience--experience of something acting -in darkness;--and the fear of the supernatural would mingle in it only -as a much later emotional development. The primeval cavern-gloom lighted -by nocturnal eyes;--the blackness of forest-gaps by river-marges, where -destruction lay in wait to seize the thirsty;--the umbrages of tangled -shores concealing horror;--the dusk of the python’s lair;--the place of -hasty refuge echoing the fury of famished brute and desperate man;--the -place of burial, and the fancied frightful kinship of the buried to -the cave-haunters:--all these, and countless other impressions of the -relation of darkness to death, must have made that ancestral fear of the -dark which haunts the imagination of the child, and still betimes seizes -the adult as he sleeps in the security of civilization. - -Not all the fear of dreams can be the fear of the immemorial. But that -strange nightmare-sensation of being held by invisible power exerted -from a distance--is it quite sufficiently explained by the simple -suspension of will-power during sleep? Or could it be a composite -inheritance of numberless memories of _having been caught_? Perhaps -the true explanation would suggest no prenatal experience of monstrous -mesmerisms nor of monstrous webs,--nothing more startling than the -evolutional certainty that man, in the course of his development, has -left behind him conditions of terror incomparably worse than any now -existing. Yet enough of the psychological riddle of nightmare remains -to tempt the question whether human organic memory holds no record of -extinct forms of pain,--pain related to strange powers once exerted by -some ghastly vanished life. - - - - -The Eternal Haunter - - -This year the Tōkyō color-prints--_Nishiki-è_--seem to me of unusual -interest. They reproduce, or almost reproduce, the color-charm of the -early broadsides; and they show a marked improvement in line-drawing. -Certainly one could not wish for anything prettier than the best prints -of the present season. - -My latest purchase has been a set of weird studies,--spectres of all -kinds known to the Far East, including many varieties not yet discovered -in the West. Some are extremely unpleasant; but a few are really -charming. Here, for example, is a delicious thing by “Chikanobu,” just -published, and for sale at the remarkable price of three _sen_! - -Can you guess what it represents?... Yes, a girl,--but what kind of -a girl? Study it a little.... Very lovely, is she not, with that shy -sweetness in her downcast gaze,--that light and dainty grace, as of a -resting butterfly?... No, she is not some Psyche of the most Eastern -East, in the sense that you mean--but she is a soul. Observe that the -cherry-flowers falling from the branch above, are passing _through_ -her form. See also the folds of her robe, below, melting into blue -faint mist. How delicate and vapory the whole thing is! It gives you -the feeling of spring; and all those fairy colors are the colors of a -Japanese spring-morning.... No, she is not the personification of any -season. Rather she is a dream--such a dream as might haunt the slumbers -of Far-Eastern youth; but the artist did not intend her to represent -a dream.... You cannot guess? Well, she is a tree-spirit,--the Spirit -of the Cherry-tree. Only in the twilight of morning or of evening she -appears, gliding about her tree;--and whoever sees her must love her. -But, if approached, she vanishes back into the trunk, like a vapor -absorbed. There is a legend of one tree-spirit who loved a man, and even -gave him a son; but such conduct was quite at variance with the shy -habits of her race.... - -You ask what is the use of drawing the Impossible? Your asking proves -that you do not feel the charm of this vision of youth,--this dream -of spring. _I_ hold that the Impossible bears a much closer relation -to fact than does most of what we call the real and the commonplace. -The Impossible may not be naked truth; but I think that it is usually -truth,--masked and veiled, perhaps, but eternal. Now to me this Japanese -dream is true,--true, at least, as human love is. Considered even as -a ghost it is true. Whoever pretends not to believe in ghosts of any -sort, lies to his own heart. Every man is haunted by ghosts. And this -color-print reminds me of a ghost whom we all know,--though most of us -(poets excepted) are unwilling to confess the acquaintance. - - * * * * * - -Perhaps--for it happens to some of us--you may have seen this haunter, -in dreams of the night, even during childhood. Then, of course, you -could not know the beautiful shape bending above your rest: possibly you -thought her to be an angel, or the soul of a dead sister. But in waking -life we first become aware of her presence about the time when boyhood -begins to ripen into youth. - -This first of her apparitions is a shock of ecstasy, a breathless -delight; but the wonder and the pleasure are quickly followed by a -sense of sadness inexpressible,--totally unlike any sadness ever felt -before,--though in her gaze there is only caress, and on her lips the -most exquisite of smiles. And you cannot imagine the reason of that -feeling until you have learned who she is,--which is not an easy thing -to learn. - -Only a moment she remains; but during that luminous moment all the tides -of your being set and surge to her with a longing for which there is not -any word. And then--suddenly!--she is not; and you find that the sun has -gloomed, the colors of the world turned grey. - -Thereafter enchantment remains between you and all that you loved -before,--persons or things or places. None of them will ever seem again -so near and dear as in other days. - -Often she will return. Once that you have seen her she will never -cease to visit you. And this haunting,--ineffably sweet, inexplicably -sad,--may fill you with rash desire to wander over the world in search -of somebody like her. But however long and far you wander, never will -you find that somebody. - -Later you may learn to fear her visits because of the pain they -bring,--the strange pain that you cannot understand. But the breadth of -zones and seas cannot divide you from her; walls of iron cannot exclude -her. Soundless and subtle as a shudder of ether is the motion of her. - -Ancient her beauty as the heart of man,--yet ever waxing fairer, forever -remaining young. Mortals wither in Time as leaves in the frost of -autumn; but Time only brightens the glow and the bloom of her endless -youth. - -All men have loved her;--all must continue to love her. But none shall -touch with his lips even the hem of her garment. - -All men adore her; yet all she deceives, and many are the ways of her -deception. Most often she lures her lover into the presence of some -earthly maid, and blends herself incomprehensibly with the body of -that maid, and works such sudden glamour that the human gaze becomes -divine,--that the human limbs shine through their raiment. But presently -the luminous haunter detaches herself from the mortal, and leaves her -dupe to wonder at the mockery of sense. - -No man can describe her, though nearly all men have some time tried -to do so. Pictured she cannot be,--since her beauty itself is a -ceaseless becoming, multiple to infinitude, and tremulous with perpetual -quickening, as with flowing of light. - -There is a story, indeed, that thousands of years ago some marvellous -sculptor was able to fix in stone a single remembrance of her. But this -doing became for many the cause of sorrow supreme; and the Gods decreed, -out of compassion, that to no other mortal should ever be given power -to work the like wonder. In these years we can worship only;--we cannot -portray. - -But who is she?--what is she?... Ah! that is what I wanted you to ask. -Well, she has never had a name; but I shall call her a tree-spirit. - -The Japanese say that you can exorcise a tree-spirit,--if you are cruel -enough to do it,--simply by cutting down her tree. - -But you cannot exorcise the Spirit of whom I speak,--nor ever cut down -her tree. - -For her tree is the measureless, timeless, billion-branching Tree of -Life,--even the World-Tree, Yggdrasil, whose roots are in Night and -Death, whose head is above the Gods. - -Seek to woo her--she is Echo. Seek to clasp her--she is Shadow. But her -smile will haunt you into the hour of dissolution and beyond,--through -numberless lives to come. - -And never will you return her smile,--never, because of that which it -awakens within you,--the pain that you cannot understand. - -And never, never shall you win to her,--because she is the phantom light -of long-expired suns,--because she was shaped by the beating of infinite -millions of hearts that are dust,--because her witchery was made in -the endless ebb and flow of the visions and hopes of youth, through -countless forgotten cycles of your own incalculable past. - - - - - * * * * * - - - - -Transcriber’s note - -A half-title page at the front of the book, and duplicate title headings -which were printed before all except the first essay in each section, -have been removed. - -Illustrations have been moved next to the text which they illustrate, -and so may not match the order in the List of Illustrations. - - -The following printing errors have been corrected: - -Illustration following p. 50 “Kutswamushi” changed to “Kutsuwamushi” - -p. 70 “KIN-HIBARI _natural size_)” changed to “KIN-HIBARI (_natural -size_)” - -p. 101 “sublety” changed to “subtlety” - -p. 123 “inaminate” changed to “inanimate” - -p. 127 “--The” changed to “--‘The” - -p. 127 “Buddha.” changed to “Buddha.’” - -Illustration after p. 136 “Seishi ‘Bosatsu” changed to “Seishi Bosatsu” - -p. 142 “the Law” changed to “the-Law” - -p. 142 “the Wondrous” changed to “the-Wondrous” - -p. 142 (note) “reads:--Ji” changed to “reads:--“Ji” - -p. 147 “Benevolence Listening” changed to “Benevolence-Listening” - -p. 150 “Cloud-and Sword” changed to “Cloud-and-Sword” - -p. 266 “softnesss” changed to “softness” - - -The following are inconsistently used: - -bowstring and bow-string - -glass-beads and glass beads - -hataori and hata-ori - -Kūkai and Kū-kai - -lifetime and life-time - -Sâkyamuni and Sakyamuni - -skyblue and sky-blue - -superindividual and super-individual - -superindividuality and super-individuality - -Sûtra (and sûtra) and Sutra (and sutra) - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Exotics and Retrospectives, by Lafcadio Hearn - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXOTICS AND RETROSPECTIVES *** - -***** This file should be named 42735-8.txt or 42735-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/7/3/42735/ - -Produced by Henry Flower and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Exotics and Retrospectives - -Author: Lafcadio Hearn - -Release Date: May 18, 2013 [EBook #42735] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXOTICS AND RETROSPECTIVES *** - - - - -Produced by Henry Flower and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - -</pre> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42735 ***</div> <div class="transnote"> <p>The cover illustration was created by the transcriber using an image from the text. The cover is placed in the public @@ -8327,383 +8290,6 @@ appeared only in some girdles of children.</p></div></div> </div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Exotics and Retrospectives, by Lafcadio Hearn - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXOTICS AND RETROSPECTIVES *** - -***** This file should be named 42735-h.htm or 42735-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/7/3/42735/ - -Produced by Henry Flower and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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