uffering, believing, in one
unchanging course of life, before the dawn of history on and down to
here and now. As they were, so they are; and I heard them sound as with
the drone of Oriental music. Then above that drone something new
appeared. Late in time, Western history emerged, and--astonishing
thing--began to move and change! "Why," I said, "there's something
trying to happen! What is it? Is there going to be a melody?" There was
not one. But there was--has the reader ever heard the second--or is it
the third?--overture to "Leonora"? A scale begins to run up, first on
the violins; then one by one the other instruments join in, till the
great basses are swept into the current and run and scale too. So it was
here. The West began; but the East caught it up. The unchanging drone
began to move and flow. Faster and faster, louder and louder, more and
more intensely, crying and flaming towards--what? Beethoven knew, and
put it into his music. We cannot put it into ideas or words. We can see
the problem, not the solution; and the problem is this. To reconcile the
Western flight down Time with the Eastern rest in Eternity; the Western
multiformity with the Eastern identity; the Western energy with the
Eastern peace. For God is neither Time nor Eternity, but Time in
Eternity; neither One nor Many, but One in Many; neither Spirit nor
Matter, but Matter-Spirit. That the great artists know, and the great
saints; the modern artists and the modern saints, who have been or who
will be. Goethe was one; Beethoven was one; and there will be greater,
when the contact between East and West becomes closer, and the sparks
from pole to pole fly faster.

I had dropped into mere thinking, and realised that the organ had
stopped. I left the great church and came out upon the back of Queen
Anne, which made me laugh. Still, it was quite religious; so were the
'buses, and the motor-cars, and the shops and offices, and the Law
Courts, and the top-hats, and the crossing-sweepers. "Dear people," I
said, "you are not dead, any more than I am. You think you are, as I too
often do. When you feel dead you should go to church; but not in a
'sacred edifice.' Beethoven, even in the Queen's Hall, is better."

PART IV

AMERICA

I

THE "DIVINE AVERAGE"

The great countries of the East have each a civilisation that is
original, if not independent. India, China, Japan, each has a peculiar
outlook on the world. Not so America, at any rat