ere the roots of Strife between the nations are to be
sought for, and whence they draw their nourishment. They are to be found
in the very muddy waters of domination and selfishness and greed. But
the roots of the Tree of Healing are in the pure waters of Life. Right
down below all the folly and meanness which clouds men's souls flows the
universal Life pure from its original source. The longer you live, the
more clearly and certainly you will perceive it. In the eyes of the men
and women around you you will perceive it, and in the eyes of the
children--aye, and even of the animals. Unclean, no doubt, will the
surface be--muddied with meannesses and self-motives; and among those
classes and currents of people who chiefly delight to dwell in the midst
of such things (who dwell in the floating mire of malice and envy and
self-assertion and avarice and conceit and deceit and domination and
other such refuse), the waters will be foul indeed; but below these
classes, among the simple, comparatively unselfconscious types of
humanity who everywhere represent the universal life (without, in a
sense, being aware of it), and again, above them, among those whose
spirits have passed "in compassion and determination around the whole
earth and found only equals and lovers," the water flows pure and free.
These two groups--between them forming far the largest and most
important mass of human kind--are those whose influence and tendency is
toward peace and amity. It is only the scurrying, avaricious,
fever-stricken, and, for all their wealth, poverty-stricken classes and
cliques of the civilization-period who are the sources of discord and
strife--and they only for a time. In the end it will be found that by
every river and stream and tiny brook over the whole earth grows the
invincible Tree of Life, whose roots are deep in the human heart, and
whose leaves are for the healing of the Nations.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] _My Life_, vol ii, p. 288.

[32] G. Lowes Dickinson, _Civilizations of India, China, and Japan_,
p.43. See also Eugene Simon, _La Cite Chinoise,_ passim.

* * * * *

APPENDIX

[The following extracts, mostly from contemporaneous sources, are
gathered together in an Appendix with the object of throwing
side-lights, _often from opposing points of view_, on the questions
raised in the text.]

* * * * *

APPENDIX

A NEW AND BETTER