me deadly in the West. The
East thrives upon fatalism, and there is a glamour about its most
materialistic writings, through which far spiritual things seem to
quiver as in a sun-haze. The atmosphere of the West is different, and
fatalism, adopted by its more practical mind, is sheer suicide.

Not that there is much likelihood of a nation with the history and the
literature of England behind it, ever becoming to any great extent
materialistic in the crude sense of Omar's poetry. The danger is
subtler. The motto, "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die," is
capable of spiritualisation, and if you spiritualise that motto it
becomes poisonous indeed. For there are various ways of eating and
drinking, and many who would not be tempted with the grosser appetites
may become pagans by devoting themselves to a rarer banquet, the feast
of reason and the flow of soul. It is possible in that way also to take
the present moment for Eternity, to live and think without horizons. Mr.
Peyton has said, "You see in some little house a picture of a cottage on
a moor, and you wonder why these people, living, perhaps, in the heart
of a great city, and in the most commonplace of houses, put such a
picture there. The reason for it is, that that cottage is for them the
signal of the immortal life of men, and the moor has infinite horizons."
That is the root of the matter after all--the soul and horizons. He who
says, "To-day shall suffice for me," whether it be in the high
intellectual plane or in the low earthly one, has fallen into the grip
of the world that passeth away; and that is a danger which Omar's advent
has certainly not lessened.

The second reason for care in this neighbourhood is that epicureanism is
only safe for those whose tastes lie in the direction of the simple
life. Montaigne has wisely said that it is pernicious to those who have
a natural tendency to vice. But vice is not a thing which any man loves
for its own sake, until his nature has suffered a long process of
degradation. It is simply the last result of a habit of luxurious
self-indulgence; and the temptation to the self-indulgent, the present
world in one form or another, comes upon everybody at times. There are
moods when all of us want to break away from the simple life, and feel
the splendour of the dazzling lights and the intoxication of the strange
scents of the world. To surrender to these has always been, and always
will be, deadly. It is the old temptat