the matter of these strange virtues, to know them is to kill them. A man may be conscious of being heroic or conscious of being divine, but he cannot (in spite of all the Anglo-Saxon poets) be conscious of being unconscious.

Now, I do not think that it can be honestly denied that some portion of this impossibility attaches to a class very different in their own opinion, at least, to the school of Anglo-Saxonism. I mean that school of the simple life, commonly associated with Tolstoy. If a perpetual talk about one's own robustness leads to being less robust, it is even more true that a perpetual talking about one's own simplicity leads to being less simple. One great complaint, I think, must stand against the modern upholders of the simple life-the simple life in all its varied forms, from vegetarianism to the honorable consistency of the Doukhobors. This complaint against them stands, that they would make us simple in the unimportant things, but complex in the important things. They would make us simple in the things that do not matter that is, in diet, in costume, in etiquette, in economic system. But they But they would make us complex in the things that do matter-in philosophy, in loyalty, in spiritual acceptance, and spiritual rejection. It does not so very much matter whether a man eats a grilled tomato or a plain tomato; it does very much matter whether he eats a plain tomato with a grilled mind. The only kind of simplicity worth preserving is the simplicity of the heart, the simplicity which accepts. and enjoys. There may be a reasonable doubt as to what system preserves this; there can surely be no doubt that a system of simplicity destroys it. There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grape-nuts on principle.

The chief error of these people is to be found in the very phrase to which they are most attached-"plain living and high thinking." These people do not stand in need of, will not be improved by, plain living and high thinking. They stand

in need of the contrary. They would be improved by high living and plain thinking. A little high living (I say, having a full sense of responsibility, a little high living) would teach them the force and meaning of the human festivities, of the banquet that has gone on from the beginning of the world. It would teach them the historic fact that the artificial is, if anything, older than the natural. It would teach them that the loving-cup is as old as any hunger. It would teach them that ritualism is older than any religion. And a little plain thinking would teach them how harsh and fanciful are the mass of their own ethics, how very civilized and very complicated must be the brain of the Tolstoyan who really believes it to be evil to love one's country and wicked to strike a blow.

A man approaches, wearing sandals and simple raiment, a raw tomato held firmly in his right hand, and says, "The affections of family and country alike are hindrances to the fuller development of human love"; but the plain thinker will only answer him, with a wonder not untinged with admiration, "What a great deal of trouble you must have taken in order to feel like that." High living will reject the tomato. Plain thinking will equally decisively reject the idea of the invariable sinfulness of war. High living will convince us that nothing is more materialistic than to despise a pleasure as purely material. And plain thinking will convince us that nothing is more materialistic than to reserve our horror chiefly for material wounds.

The only simplicity that matters is the simplicity of the heart. If that be gone, it can be brought back by no turnips or cellular clothing; but only by tears and terror and the fires that are not quenched. If that remain, it matters very little if a few Early Victorian armchairs remain along with it. Let us put a complex entrée into a simple old gentleman; let us not put a simple entrée into a complex old gentleman. So long as human society will leave my spiritual inside alone, I

will allow it, with a comparative submission, to work its wild will with my physical interior. I will submit to cigars. I will meekly embrace a bottle of Burgundy. I will humble myself to a hansom cab. If only by this means I may preserve to myself the virginity of the spirit, which enjoys with astonishment and fear. I do not say that these are the only methods of preserving it. I incline to the belief that there are others. But I will have nothing to do with simplicity which lacks the fear, the astonishment, and the joy alike. I will have nothing to do with the devilish vision of a child who is too simple to like toys.

The child is, indeed, in these, and many other matters, the best guide. And in nothing is the child so righteously childlike, in nothing does he exhibit more accurately the sounder order of simplicity, than in the fact that he sees everything with a simple pleasure, even the complex things. The false type of naturalness harps always on the distinction between the natural and the artificial. The higher kind of naturalness ignores that distinction. To the child the tree and the lamp-post are as natural and as artificial as each other; or rather, neither of them are natural but both supernatural. For both are splendid and unexplained. The flower with which God crowns the one, and the flame with which Sam the lamp-lighter crowns the other, are equally of the gold of fairytales. In the middle of the wildest fields the most rustic child is, ten to one, playing at steam-engines. And the only spiritual or philosophical objection to steamengines is not that men pay for them or work at them, or make them very ugly, or even that men are killed by them; but merely that men do not play at them. The evil is that the childish poetry of clockwork does not remain. The wrong is not that engines are too much admired, but that they are not admired enough. The sin is not that engines are mechanical, but that men are mechanical.

In this matter, then, as in all the other matters treated in this book, our main conclusion is that it is a fundamental point of view, a philosophy or religion which is needed, and not any change in habit or social routine. The things we need most for immediate practical purposes are all abstractions. We need a right view of the human lot, a right view of the human society, and if we were living eagerly and angrily in the enthusiasm of those things, we should, ipso facto, be living simply in the genuine. and spiritual sense. Desire and danger make every one simple. And to those who talk to us with interfering eloquence about Jaeger and the pores of the skin, and about Plasmon and the coats of the stomach, at them shall only be hurled the words that are hurled at fops and gluttons, "Take no thought what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Those amazing words are not only extraordinarily good, practical politics; they are also superlatively good hygiene. The one supreme way of making all those processes go right, the processes of health, and strength, and grace, and beauty, the one and only way of making certain of their accuracy, is to think about something else. If a man is bent on climbing into the seventh heaven, he may be quite easy about the pores of his skin. If he harnesses his wagon to a star, the process will have a most satisfactory effect upon the coats of his stomach. For the thing called "taking thought," the thing for which the best modern work is "rationalizing," is in its nature, inapplicable to all plain and urgent things. Men take thought and ponder rationalistically, touching remote things-things that only theoretically matter, such as the transit of Venus. But only at their peril can men rationalize about so practical a matter as health.

WHEN we think of a thorough-going conservative we are likely to picture him as a stay-at-home person, a barnacle fastened to one spot. We take for granted that aversion to locomotion and aversion to change are the same thing. But in thinking thus we leave out of account the inherent instability of human nature. Everybody likes a little change now and then. If a person cannot get it in one way, he gets it in another. The stay-athome gratifies his wandering fancy by making little alterations in his too-familiar surroundings. Even the Vicar of Wakefield in the days of his placid prosperity would occasionally migrate from the blue bed to the brown. A life that had such vicissitudes could not be called uneventful.

When you read the weekly newspaper published in the quietest hill town in Vermont, you become aware that a great deal is going on. Deacon Pratt shingled his barn last week. Miss Maria Jones had new shutters put on her house, and it is a great improvement. These revolutions in Goshenville are matters of keen interest to those concerned. They furnish inexhaustible material for conversation.

The true enemy to innovation is the

1 From Humanly Speaking by Samuel McChord Crothers. Reprinted by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers, and Samuel McChord Crothers, author.

traveler who sets out to see historic lands. His natural love of change is satiated by rapid change of locality. rapid change of locality. But his natural conservatism asserts itself in his insistence that the places which he visits shall be true to their own reputations. Having journeyed, at considerable expense, to a celebrated spot, he wants to see the thing it was celebrated for, and he will accept no substitute. From his point of view the present inhabitants are merely caretakers who should not be allowed to disturb the remains intrusted to their custody. Everything must be kept as it used to be.

The moment any one packs his trunk and puts money in his purse to visit lands old in story he becomes a hopeless reactionary. He is sallying forth to see things not as they are, but as they were "once upon a time." He is attracted to certain localities by something which happened long ago. pened long ago. A great many things may have happened since, but these must be put out of the way. One period of time must be preserved to satisfy his romantic imagination. He loves the good old ways, and he has a curiosity to see the bad old ways that may still be preserved. It is only the modern that offends him.

The American who, in his own country, is in feverish haste to improve conditions, when he sets foot in Europe becomes the fanatical foe to progress. The Old World, in his judgment, ought to

look old. He longs to hear the clatter of wooden shoes. If he had his way he would have laws enacted forbidding peasant folk to change their ancient costumes. He would preserve every relic of feudalism. He bitterly laments the division of great estates. A nobleman's park with its beautiful idle acres, its deer, its pheasants, and its scurrying rabbits, is so much. more pleasant to look at than a succession of market-gardens. Poachers, gamekeepers, and squires are alike interesting, if only they would dress so that he could know them apart. He is enchanted with thatched cottages which look damp and picturesque. He detests the model dwellings which are built with a tooobvious regard for sanitation. He seeks narrow and ill-smelling streets where the houses nod at each other, as if in the last stages of senility, muttering mysterious reminiscences of old tragedies. He frequents scenes of ancient murders, and places where bandits once did congregate. He leaves the railway carriage, to cross a heath where romantic highwaymen used to ask the traveler to stand and deliver. He is indignant to find electric lights and policemen. A heath ought to be lonely, and fens ought to be preserved from drainage.

He seeks dungeons and instruments of torture. The dungeons must be underground, and only a single ray of light must penetrate. He is much troubled to find that the dungeon in the Castle of Chillon is much more cheerful than he had supposed it was. The Bridge of Sighs in Venice disappoints him in the same way. Indeed, there are few places mentioned by Lord Byron that are as gloomy as they are in the poetical description.

The traveler is very insistent in his plea for the preservation of battlefields. Now, Europe is very rich in battlefields, many of the most fertile sections having been fought over many times. But the ravages of agriculture are everywhere seen. There is no such leveler as the ploughman. Often when one has come to refresh his mind with the events of

one terrible day, he finds that there is nothing whatever to remind him of what happened. For centuries there has been ploughing and harvesting. Nature takes so kindly to these peaceful pursuits that one is tempted to think of the battle as merely an episode.

Commerce is almost as destructive. Cities that have been noted for their sieges often turn out to be surprisingly prosperous. The old walls are torn down to give way to parks and boulevards. Massacres which in their day were noted leave no trace behind. One can get more of an idea of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve by reading a book by one's fireside than by going to Paris. For all one can see there, there might have been no such accident.

Moral considerations have little place. in the traveler's mind. The progressive ameliorations that have taken place tend to obscure our sense of the old conflicts. A reform once accomplished becomes a part of our ordinary consciousness. We take it for granted, and find it hard to understand what the reformer was so excited about.

As a consequence, the chief object of an historical pilgrimage is to discover some place where the old conditions have not been improved away. The religious pilgrim does not expect to find the old prophets, but he has a pious hope of finding the abuses which the prophets denounced.

I have in mind a clergyman who, in his own home, is progressive to a fault. He is impatient of any delay. He is all the time seeking out the very latest inventions in social and economic reforms. But several years ago he made a journey to the Holy Land, and when he came back he delivered a lecture on his experiences. A more reactionary attitude could not be imagined. Not a word did he say about the progress of education or civil-service reform in Palestine. There was not a sympathetic reference to sanitation or good roads. The rights of women were not mentioned. Representative government seemed to be an abomination to him.

All his enthusiasm was for the other side. He was for Oriental conservatism in all its forms. He was for preserving every survival of ancient custom. He told of the delight with which he watched the laborious efforts of the peasants ploughing with a forked stick. He believed that there had not been a single improvement in agriculture since the days of Abraham.

The economic condition of the people had not changed for the better since patriarchal times, and one could still have a good idea of a famine such as sent the brothers of Joseph down into Egypt. Turkish misgovernment furnished him with a much clearer idea of the publicans, and the hatred they aroused in the minds of the people, than he had ever hoped to obtain. In fact, one could hardly appreciate the term "publicans and sinners" without seeing the Oriental tax-gatherers. He was very fortunate in being able to visit several villages which had been impoverished by their exactions. The rate of wages throws much light on the Sunday-School lessons. A penny a day does not seem such an insufficient minimum wage to a traveler, as it does to a stay-at

home person. On going down from Jerusalem to Jericho he fell among thieves, or at least among a group of thievish-looking Bedouins who gave him a new appreciation of the parable of the Samaritan. It was a wonderful experience. And he found that the animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans had not abated. To be sure, there are very few Samaritans left, and those few are thoroughly despised.

The good-roads movement has not yet invaded Palestine, and we can still experience all the discomforts of the earlier. times. Many a time when he took his life in his hands and wandered across the Judaean hills, my friend repeated to himself the text, "In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the people_walked through by-ways."

To most people Shamgar is a mere name. But after you have walked for

hours over those rocky by-ways, never knowing at what moment you may be attacked by a treacherous robber, you know how Shamgar felt. He becomes a real person. You are carried back into the days when "there was no king of Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes."

The railway between Joppa and Jerusalem is to be regretted, but fortunately it is a small affair. There are rumors of commercial enterprises which, if successful, would change the appearance of many of the towns. Fortunately they are not likely to be successful, at least in our day. The brooding spirit of the East can be trusted to defend itself against the innovating West. For the present, at least, Palestine is a fascinating country to travel in.

A traveler in Ceylon and India writes to a religious paper of his journey. He says, "Colombo has little to interest the tourist, yet it is a fine city." One who reads between the lines understands that the fact that it is a fine city is the cause of its uninterestingness. His impression of Madura was more satisfactory. There one can see the Juggernaut car drawn through the streets by a thousand men, though it is reluctantly admitted that the self-immolation of fanatics under the wheels is no longer allowed. "The Shiva temple at Madura is the more interesting as its towers are ornamented with six thousand idols."

The writer who rejoiced at the sight of six thousand idols in Madura, would have been shocked at the exhibition of a single crucifix in his meeting-house at home.

I confess that I have not been able to overcome the Tory prejudice in favor of vested interests in historical places. If one has traveled to see "the old paths which wicked men have trodden," it is a disappointment to find that they are not there. I had such an experience in Capri. We had wandered through the vineyards and up the steep, rocky way to the Villa of Tiberius. On the top of the cliff are the ruins of the pleasure-house which the