r how the whole
world is in general divided into two hemispheres upon this matter. One
half of the world--the great dim East--is mystic. It insists upon not
seeing anything too clearly. Make any one of the great ideas of life
distinct and clear, and immediately it seems to the Oriental to be
untrue. He has an instinct which tells him that the vastest thoughts are
too vast for the human mind, and that if they are made to present
themselves in forms of statement which the human mind can comprehend,
their nature is violated and their strength is lost.

"On the other hand, the Occidental, the man of the West, demands
clearness and is impatient with mystery. He loves a definite statement
as much as his brother of the East dislikes it. He insists on knowing
what the eternal and infinite forces mean to his personal life, how they
will make him personally happier and better, almost how they will build
the house over his head, and cook the dinner on his hearth. This is the
difference between the East and the West, between man on the banks of
the Ganges and man on the banks of the Mississippi. Plenty of
exceptions, of course, there are--mystics in Boston and St. Louis,
hard-headed men of facts in Bombay and Calcutta. The two great
dispositions cannot be shut off from one another by an ocean or a range
of mountains. In some nations and places--as, for instance, among the
Jews and in our own New England--they notably commingle. But in general
they thus divide the world between them. The East lives in the moonlight
of mystery, the West in the sunlight of scientific fact. The East cries
out to the Eternal for vague impulses. The West seizes the present with
light hands, and will not let it go till it has furnished it with
reasonable, intelligible motives. Each misunderstands, distrusts, and in
large degree despises the other. But the two hemispheres together, and
not either one by itself, make up the total world." Thus, in one of his
sermons, spoke the great Unitarian preacher Phillips Brooks, late Bishop
of Massachusetts (_The Mystery of Iniquity and Other Sermons_, sermon
xvi.).

We might rather say that throughout the whole world, in the East as well
as in the West, rationalists seek definition and believe in the concept,
while vitalists seek inspiration and believe in the person. The former
scrutinize the Universe in order that they may wrest its secrets from
it; the latter pray to the Consciousness of the Universe, strive to
p