nding
by express several novels, among them....

XV

JESSICA TO PHILIP

MY DEAR MR. TOWERS:

Here in the South we are born into our traditions and we generally die by
them. We never encourage the mental extravagance of adding new dimensions
to our minds. When you have had an hour's conversation with any of us, or
have exchanged three letters, you can be comfortably sure of what we think
on any subject under the sun. Thus, you see, I was wholly unprepared for
the point of view expressed in your last two letters. I thought you were a
gentle disciple,--following the lights behind us indeed; but I did not
suspect that you were bent upon this journey through the dust of centuries
with the temper of a modern savage.

However, it seems a man must have either ass's ears or a cloven foot; and,
soon or late, most of us expect to find our hero in Bottom's predicament.
But I would rather have acknowledged the beam in my own eye than have
discovered this diabolical split in your heel. All my life I have been
familiar with the inhumanity of the merely spiritually minded. And I think
it was because your own spirit was not denominational, nor fitted to any
dogma of my acquaintance, that I trusted it. But really, the product is
always the same. And I begin to wonder if there is not something
fundamentally cruel in the law that governs soul-life. No matter what the
age or the colour of the doctrine is, those most highly developed in this
way generally show a _conscientious selfishness_ that is dehumanising.
They have no tender sense of touch, their relation to the world about them
is obtuse; and for this reason, I think, they excite aversion in normally
minded people.

I leave you, my dear sir, to "expose the serpent lurking under the
flowers." For my part, I believe humanitarianism is the better part of any
religion. And while my knowledge of social orders does not reach so far
back into the grave-dust of the past, I am unwilling to agree with you
that it is "coeval with human nature." But it is one of the ends toward
which all religions must tend,--for if a man love not his brother whom he
hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?--But I forget! Love
is not essential to your sort of Nirvana mysticism. In you, spirituality
is a sort of cruel aspiration toward personal perfection. Still, that
little scripture represents the advance made by this modern religion of
Christianity over your Hindu theosophy.

Do yo