our art, at its highest, that it shall be a
stimulant, and call to our minds the warfare in which we are
engaged: the hopeless-heroic gay and ever mournful warfare of
the soul against the senses. Well; that battle has to be
fought; there is nothing better than fighting it--until it is
won. Let us by all means hear the snarling of the trumpets; let
us heed the battle-cries of the Soul. But let us not forget that
somewhere also the Spirit is at peace: let us remember that
there is Peace, beyond the victory. In Chinese art and poetry we
do not hear the war-shouts and the trumpets: broken, there, are
the arrow and the bow; the shield, the sword, the sword and the
battle.--But--_the Day-Spring from on high hath visited us._

What element from the Divine is in it, does not concern itself
with this earth-life; tells you nothing in criticism of life.
There is naught in it of the Soul as Thinker, nor of the Soul as
Warrior. But surely it is something for us, immersed here in
these turbid Rajasika regions, to be reminded sometimes that the
Sattvic planes exist; it is something for us to be given
glimpses of the pure quietudes of the Spirit in its own place. I
am the better, if I have been shown for an instant the delicate
imperishable beauty of the Eternal.

"We are tired who follow after
Truth, a phantasy that flies;
You with only look and laughter
Stain our hearts with richest dyes."--

They do indeed; with look and laughter--or it may be tears.

Now, what does it all mean? Simply this, I think: that the West
brings down what it can of the Spirit into the world of thought
and passion; brings it down right here upon this bank and
shoal of time; but China rises with you into the world of
the Spirit. We do not as a rule allow the validity of the
Chinese method. We sometimes dub Keats, at his best a thorough
Chinaman, 'merely beautiful.'

I have rather put the case for China; because all our hereditary
instincts will rise with a brief for the West. But the truth is
that the Spirit elects its own methods and its own agents, and
does this through the one, that through the other. When I read
_Hamlet,_ I have no doubt Shakespeare was the greatest poet that
ever lived. When I read Li Po, I forget Shakespeare, and think
that among those who sing none was ever so wonderful as this
Banished Angel of the Hills of Tang. I forget the Voice that
cried 'Sleep no more!' and Poetry seems to me t