It is easy to criticise but how else can religion be taught? We cannot command success but can only do what lies in our power. We must therefore rest content with teaching religious doctrine and hope for the best.

V. You ask me whether I know of any other method. I tell you there is one and only one method of imparting religious education. Religion must be lived before it can be taught; and we grown up people must make our life reflect the light of religion if we want our young men to seek for that light and to walk in it.

P. Here are generalities with a vengeance, and those from the lips of one who does not like them. Please drop metaphor and confine yourself to the level ground. How are we to make our life reflect the light of religion?

V. Before I answer your question I should like to know whether we mean the same thing when we speak of religion. What is your notion of religion? P.-I have not got any cut-and-dried definition of religion. Let me know what is your idea of it. V.-Stripped of all its excrescences, religion is in my opinion nothing but submission and obedience to what we believe to be the will of God; and a man can know the true doctrine only if he do His will. Do you agree?

P.-Oh yes, that will do as a working definition. V. Well then, if to fear God and do His commandments is the pith of religion, you must agree with me that, in whatever else we may disagree, there is no doubt that it is God's will that we should feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the wretched. There is no metaphor in this, nothing abstract, nothing beyond the meanest comprehension.

P.-I do not dispute it.

V.-Are we then fulfilling these primary commandments in our life? Do we not, on the other hand, make of gold and silver our God as Dante says, and strive to perform not the will of God but the will of Mammon? Is not our whole life a race unto that life which is death?

P. I cannot deny it but you must make allowance for the weakness of human nature. The spirit is willing though the flesh is weak.

V. Is the spirit really willing? I doubt it very much. I go further and ask you-whatever our own professions and practice may be-whether we really want our children to do God's will to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked and all the rest of it? Do we really wish our boys and girls to be taught to do this, drilled and disciplined to do this, to be examined with reference to this, declared to have passed or failed on this

basis? Surely this would be an examination worth having, and of such examinations alone it cannot be said with justice that perverse studere qui examinibus studeant. But we look upon such an ideal as impracticable if not as actually foolish. We do not want our boys to give what they have to the poor and look only to the treasure in heaven-to "take stars for money." No, we want them to get on in the world, to get money-honestly if they can-but in any case to get it, to be well-established in the world, and to shun poverty as something worse than the deadliest of sins. Our exhortations to our sons are in the same sense though not in the same words as those employed by Boileau in his seventh satire: Endurcis-toi le cœur; sois arabe, corsaire... Ne va point sottement faire le généreux; Engrasse toi, mon fils, du suc des malheureux.

P. What do these words mean? I do not understand French very well.

"Harden your

V.--This is what they mean heart; be an Arab, a pirate; never be so foolish as to do a generous action; fatten yourself, my son, at the expense of the unfortunate." We do not speak in this plain-spoken manner to our children but the sum and effect of what we say is the same. Don't you see that we incline not only our own hearts to covetousness but even the hearts of our children by our professions no less than by our practice? How then can you say that the spirit is willing?

P.-No doubt almost all of us grown-up people do work for wrong ends, but there are some who desire that their children should walk in the right way and should be taught to do so. Why should you object to it?

V.-I do not object to it, but I say it is a vain desire, and that it is the height of folly to expect that while we follow false images of good-imagini di ben seguendo false-our children would nevertheless take the narrow path that leads to heaven. The influence of example is nowhere more marked than in this-that, as George Herbert says, "in vice the copy still exceeds the pattern."

P.-There is a good deal in what you say, but you seem to ignore the potential virtue in man and the influence of careful and well-considered training on the character of young people. We are all fond of life and limb, and prefer comfort to discomfort, and yet how is it that millions of young men willingly and cheerfully enlist in the army and expose themselves to every risk for their country's sake, how even the soldiers of conscript armies after undergoing a short period

of training acquire that soldierly spirit which subordinates self to the interest of all?

V. You are now throwing new light on the subject, and I shall be glad if you develop your point of view.

P.-I cannot do better than read to you the following extract from the Infantry Training Manual issued by the British General Staff:-"The objects in view in developing a soldierly spirit are to help the soldier to bear fatigue, privation and danger cheerfully; to imbue him with a sense of honour; to give him confidence in his superiors and comrades; to increase his powers of initiative, of self-confidence and of self-restraint; to train him to obey orders, or to act in the absence of orders for the advantage of his regiment under all conditions; to produce such a high degree of courage and disregard of self that in the stress of battle he will use his brains and his weapons coolly and to the best advantage; to impress upon him that so long as he is physically capable of fighting, surrender to the enemy is a disgraceful act; and finally to teach him to act in combination with his comrades in order to defeat the enemy." Now this is a high enough ideal; in fact it is sufficient not merely for battles of the ordinary kind but also for the battle of life. And can it be denied that this high ideal is appreciably realised in actual practice? If then you can teach the true soldierly spirit to your soldiers, why can you not teach the same self-sacrificing spirit to your young men ? If we take the same pains we shall achieve a similar success, and, please God, we shall try our best to take at least equal pains.

V. Now you are talking to some purpose. The necessity of self-subjection for the sake of

MY DEAR WILSON,

serving others, of supplanting the carnal root of selfishness by the spiritual seed of selflessness, of creating a longing for things that are pure and honest in order to kill the appetite for things that are evil and forbidden, and of teaching, on the one hand, the futility of thrift and the foolishness of accumulation, and on the other, the duty of spending and the economy of wise expenditure, has never yet been clearly recognized by those persons, whose duty it is to educate children in the home or in the school. Yet the need for these lessons is not less than the need for others; nor is the work of building up character laid on a sure foundation unless the spirit of gain is replaced by the spirit of service and the range of our education includes not only the task of enabling our young people to keep themselves unspotted from the world, but the duty of washing off the spots of the world also. And let me assure you, this is not to be done by lectures however eloquent or by professors however learned, but only by setting an example ourselves in our daily lives, or if that is not possible, at least by showing honour to the true and the good instead of the wealthy and the powerful.

P.-I cannot but agree with you, and let us hope, my friend, that the authorities of the Hindu University are not ignorant of these things. Meanwhile it is the duty of all of us to help them to the limit of our power in realising the bright expectations of all who are interested in the cause of true education. This talk of ours will not have been in vain if it has strengthened our purpose to do our very best in this noble

cause.

Most Western men and women are taught to believe from their very childhood that the East is and has always been treating its women shamefully. Now, there can be no more ridiculous idea than this! Learn something more of the Orient before passing such a judgment on it. The East has rightly felt through its imaginae instinct that woman must above everything

else be the eternal guardian of human morality; and, therefore, the one and the only place where she can exercise her noblest influence is her home. 'Make your home happy,' thinks the Eastern woman, 'in order to make your nation good and great.'

You should not think, however, that this ideal has prevented our women from achieving greatness in other walks of life. Far from it. We have had a greater number of able queens on our

throne than probably any other country in the world. In the Kamakura period, there were many Amazons in Japan, who used to fight against the strongest of our knights. Our Empress Jingo herself led a great army for the first conquest of Korea in pre-Buddhistie times. There have been many Japanese women, who have attained great distinction in the world of letters also. In fact, during one period of our history, the whole of our native literature was in the hands of women, whilst our men were devoting their time and energy to the study of the Chinese Classics. It was during that period that two of our greatest novels, called 'Genji Monogatari' and 'Makura. No-Zoshi' were written.

As the Western ideals of womanhood have been penetrating into Japan since the last fifty years, every Japanese, who loves his country and its old ideals, is justified in frankly expressing what he thinks of the atmosphere in which Western women are brought up.

Your ideas of chivalry are different from ours, -in that you admire mostly youth and physical beauty in women, while we respect women as women, whether they be young or old, beautiful or otherwise. These sensuous ideas of yours have been the cause of endless troubles to you in your domestic life. You talk with neurotic enthusiasm of your beloved' before marriage. But as soon as you are married, the poetry of your senses evaporates and indifference towards your wife follows. This 'indifference' leads highly-strung people like you Westerners topolygamy. Yes-polygamy !-not open and legalised, as it is practised in many Eastern countries, but hidden from the eyes of the world and therefore very degrading!

All your modern art is meant to promote this immoral polygamy, by thrilling your nerves, exciting your senses, and making you feel sensually hungry and thirsty. What are your nude and half-nude pictures and statues meant for-if not to make you long for undesirable bodily pleasures? Most of your present-day music is not soothing and elevating as it ought to be. It is mentally and morally troubled. Your poets have done very little on the whole beyond apotheosizing the ephemeral sensations and feelings of lovers before marriage, unlike Eastern poets-who prefer to sing of the calm and ever-lastingly noble virtues of married men and women. And your prosewriters!--what are they doing at present? Are not some of them trying to justify prostitution from an artistic point of view?

Marriage is becoming less and less sacred in your eyes. You cut the nuptial bond, whenever you find it convenient to do so. The ideal of motherhood, the noblest ideal that a woman can cherish in this life, is naturally despised by women in societies such as yours; for, are they not educated for short-lived flirtations and courtships rather than for life-long duties of motherhood? O, how degraded must a woman be, who thinks lightly of the divine rights and duties of wifehood and motherhood!

To add to the fun of the comedy of your social life, the suffragette has now appeared amongst you. She wants to upset not only society, but Nature itself! She laughs at 'mere' man, who prepared the way for her advent. She calls him selfish,' brutal', and by a dozen other equally polite epithets. She declares her mission to be to introduce order in Western society. I do hope she will succeed for your sake; for, is not order badly wanted in your society? In one respect at least your suffragette is quite logical and clear-sighted. You people have been talking ceaselessly about the 'equality' (that vaguest of words!) of the sexes, and so she naturally comes forward now and says: Well, if we are your equals, let us also take part in every kind of work which you men are doing-be it social, moral, athletic, or political.'

Your

To be quite frank, I, for one, do not want any Western influence in our domestic life. For what is the aim of life, the goal towards which every individual aspires? It is happiness. Now, have you succeeded to any appreciable extent in making yourselves happy ?-No! On the contrary you have done every thing to drive away enduring happiness from your midst. dramatic literature mirrors the wreck that you have made of your life. Compared with you, we Japanese are really happy. The East is conservative, because she knows herself, and the meaning of human life. After much thought and experience she has adopted and has been firmly keeping up her faith in those ideals, which tend to make the majority of human beings happy. The West is childish and mistakes 'change' for 'real progress. She destroys her ideals very soon after creating them. She cannot believe in anything altogether, and so she suffers without getting either happier or stronger through her sufferings.

Yours Sincerely,

J. OKAKURA,

Romance bears to novel the same relation that poetry bears to prose. It satisfies the desire for something above and beyond the little world wherein we are cribbed, cabined, and confined, and lends to life an added grace and charm, and reveals the eternal meaning, purpose, and value of things. As Professor Saintsbury says: Romance is eternal while novel is transitory.. Again, Mr. Raleigh points out: "Time and again, in the world's history, where East meets West, the spirit of romance has been born." Just as in the 16th and 17th centuries the drama overshadowed the novel as a literary form in English literature, in modern times the novel overshadows the drama. Even in the realm of the novel we see an evolution due to the busy life of modern times and the tyranny of journalism. The long novel has given place to the short story, and sensation-hunting, which is the life breath of journalism, has invaded the sacred sphere of art. The democratisation of literature and the influence of free circulating libraries have further influenced the evolution of the novel. In such an age it is refreshing to come across a real writer of romance who is at the same time a great literary genius.

Miss Amy Cruse has very well brought out in her work the great qualities of Stevenson as a man and as a writer. One observation by her is worth pondering over. She says at the very beginning of her work: "The history of English Literature on its biographical side serves to show how few of our great writers have come of a literary stock. In one instance after another the same story is repeated; a strong and virile race, following some active occupation, produces at a certain stage a man or woman who provides it with means of expression; and, though this is probably mere coincidence, the branch of the family thus distinguished has a way of soon afterwards dwindling and dying out." R. L. Stevenson had a sensitive and emotional nature. He says: "I seem to have been born with a sentiment of something moving in things of an infinite attraction and horror coupled." He had this "vivid, strenuous quality" all through his life. To him "facts mattered less always than

*Robert Louis Stevenson. By Amy Cruse, [" Heroes of All Time" Series: ] George G. Harrap & Co., London.

feelings." Mr. Gosse says of him: "A child
like mirth leaped and danced in him; he seeme
to skip upon the hills of life." His life itself wa
a romance. It is of interest to us to learn th
following fact about one of his masterpieces :-
"He saw in his sleep, he tells us, two of the mos
important scenes in history, and when he woke
although he was still very weak from a recer
attack of hæmorrhage, he sat down and wrot
from the suggestion thus given, the story
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." He took also a kee
interest in public affairs. He died in 1894. H
Requiem is a wonderful poem, summing up h
life-nay, all life, all worthy life-admirably.
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie
Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me;
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

His range and versatility are wonderful. I not propose to discuss his works in any deta here. "He wrote essays, plays, novels, sho stories, lyrics and blank verses, fables, lay sermor and prayers." His greatest charm as a writer his "distinctive and finished style." He h defined literature as "words used to the be purpose, with no waste, but going tight round subject." Conciseness, daintiness, exquisitene of epithet, humour, and pathos distinguish bi wonderful style. But even more than the charms his style is the charm of his personality as reves ed in his works. I shall conclude this all-to brief sketch with the following precious words Stevenson's in his Memories and Portraits :-"Tri romantic art, again, makes a romance of all thing It reaches into the highest abstraction of t ideal; it does not refuse the most pedestris realism... Fiction is to the grown what play is to the child; it is there that I changes the atmosphere and tenor of his lift and when the game so chimes with his fancy the he can join in it with all his heart, when pleases him with every turn, when he loves t recall it and dwells upon its recollection wit entire delight, fiction is called romance."

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