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
place themselves in immediate relationship with the Soul of the World,
with God, in order that they may find the guarantee or substance of what
they hope for, which is not to die, and the evidence of what they do not
see.
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