that we must go to the Far East for a
sympathetic and transcendental interpretation of Nature. We have paid
a long enough toll of mystics and even of madmen to be quit of that
disability.

Yet there is a difference, and it is just what I suggested. The Eastern
mysticism is an ecstasy of unity; the Christian mysticism is an ecstasy
of creation, that is of separation and mutual surprise. The latter says,
like St. Francis, "My brother fire and my sister water"; the former
says, "Myself fire and myself water." Whether you call the Eastern
attitude an extension of oneself into everything or a contraction of
oneself into nothing is a matter of metaphysical definition. The
effect is the same, an effect which lives and throbs throughout all the
exquisite arts of the East. This effect is the Sing called rhythm, a
pulsation of pattern, or of ritual, or of colours, or of cosmic theory,
but always suggesting the unification of the individual with the world.
But there is quite another kind of sympathy the sympathy with a
thing because it is different. No one will say that Rembrandt did not
sympathise with an old woman; but no one will say that Rembrandt painted
like an old woman. No one will say that Reynolds did not appreciate
children; but no one will say he did it childishly. The supreme instance
of this divine division is sex, and that explains (what I could never
understand in my youth) why Christendom called the soul the bride of
God. For real love is an intense realisation of the "separateness" of
all our souls. The most heroic and human love-poetry of the world is
never mere passion; precisely because mere passion really is a melting
back into Nature, a meeting of the waters. And water is plunging
and powerful; but it is only powerful downhill. The high and human
love-poetry is all about division rather than identity; and in the great
love-poems even the man as he embraces the woman sees her, in the same
instant, afar off; a virgin and a stranger.

For the first injustice, of which we have spoken, still recurs; and if
we grant that the East has a right to its difference, it is not realised
in what we differ. That nursery tale from nowhere about St. George and
the Dragon really expresses best the relation between the West and the
East. There were many other differences, calculated to arrest even
the superficial eye, between a saint and a dragon. But the essential
difference was simply this: that the Dragon did want to eat St