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the world. She may be, truly, the one woman for him, though even that is not probable; but he cannot mean to assert that she is the only woman living or to deny that each of the others might be the one woman for someone.

Now, when a Hegelian philosopher, contradicting Saint Bernard, says that society is his be-all and end-all, that he himself is nothing but an invisible point at which relations cross, and that if you removed from him his connection with Hegel, with his university, his church, his wife, and his publishers, there would be nothing left, or at best a name and a peg to hang a gown on, far be it from me to revise his own analysis of his nature; society may be the only felicity and the only reality for him. But that cannot annul the judgment of Saint Bernard. He had a great mind and a great heart, and he knew society well; at least, he accepted the verdict which antiquity had passed on society, after a very long, brilliant, and hearty experience of it; and he knew the religious life and solitude as well; and I can't help thinking that he, too, must have been right in his selfknowledge, and that solitude must have been the only happiness for him.

Nevertheless, the matter is not limited to this confronting of divers honest judgments, or confessions of moral experience. The natures expressed in these judgments have a long history, and are on different levels; the one may be derived from the other. Thus, it is evident that the beatific solitude of Saint Bernard was filled with a kind of society; he devoted it to communion with the Trinity, or to composing fervent compliments to the Virgin Mary. It was only the society to be found in inns and hovels, in castles, sacristies, and refectories, that he thought it happiness to avoid. That the wilderness to which hermits flee must be peopled by their fancy, could have been foreseen

by any observer of human nature. Tormenting demons or ministering angels must needs appear, because man is rooted in society, and his instincts are addressed to it; for the first nine months, or even years, of his existence he is a parasite; and scarcely are these parental bonds a little relaxed, when he instinctively forms other ties, that turn him into a husband and father, and keep him such all his days.

If ever he finds happiness in solitude, it can be only by lavishing on objects of his imagination the attentions which his social functions require that he should lavish on something. Without exercising these faculties somehow, his nature would be paralyzed; there would be no fuel to feed a spiritual flame. All Saint Bernard could mean, then, is that happiness lies in this substitution of an ideal for a natural society, in converse with thoughts rather than with things. Such a substitution is normal, and a mark of moral vigor; we must not be misled into comparing it with a love of dolls or of lap-dogs. Dolls are not impersonal, and lap-dogs are not ideas: they are only less rebellious specimens of the genus thing; they are more portable idols. To substitute the society of ideas for that of things is simply to live in the mind; it is to survey the world of existences in its truth and beauty rather than in its personal perspectives, or with practical urgency.

It is the sole path to happiness for the intellectual man, because the intellectual man cannot be satisfied with a world of perpetual change, defeat, and imperfection. It is the path trodden by ancient philosophers and modern saints or poets; not, of course, by modern writers on philosophy (except Spinoza), because these have not been philosophers in the vital sense; they have practised no spiritual discipline, suffered no change of heart, but lived on exactly like other professors, and

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exerted themselves to prove the existence of a God favorable to their own desires, instead of searching for the God that happens to exist. Certainly, this path, in its beginnings, is arduous, and leaves the natural man somewhat spare and haggard; he seems to himself to have fasted for forty days and forty nights. But he usually congratulates himself upon it in the end; and of those who persevere, some become saints, and some poets, and some philosophers.

Yet why, we may ask, should happiness be found exclusively in this ideal society where none intrudes? If the intellectual man cannot lay up his treasures in a world of change, the natural man can perfectly well satisfy his instincts within it; and why should n't the two live amicably together in a house of two storys? I can see no essential reason; but historically, natural society long ago proved a moral failure. It could not harmonize, or decently satisfy even the instincts on which it rests. Hence, the philosophers have felt bound not only to build themselves a superstructure, but to quit the ground floor-materially, if possible, by leading a monastic life, religiously, in any case, by not expecting to find much except weeping and wailing in this vale of tears. We may tax this despair with being premature, and call such a flight Vinto an imaginary world a desperate expedient; at any time, the attempts of the natural man to live his cosmic life happily may be renewed, and may succeed. Solitude peopled with ideas might still remain to employ the mind; but it would not be the only beatitude.

Yet, the insecurity of natural society runs deeper, for natural society itself is an expedient and a sort of refuge of despair. It, too, in its inception, seemed a sacrifice and a constraint. The primitive soul hates order and the happiness founded on order. The barbarous soul hates justice and peace. The belly is

always rebelling against the members. The belly was once all in all; it was a single cell floating deliciously in a warm liquid; it had no outer organs; it thought it did n't need them. It vegetated in peace;- no noises, no alarms, no lusts, no nonsense. Ah, veritably solitude was blessedness then! But it was a specious solitude and a precarious blessedness, resting on ignorance. The warm liquid might cool, or might dry up; it might breed all sorts of enemies; presently, heaven might crack, and the cell be cleft in two. Happy the hooded microbe that put forth feelers in time, and awoke to its social or unsocial environment! I am not sure that, beneath the love of ideal society, there was not in Saint Bernard a lingering love of primeval peace, of seminal slumber; that he did not yearn for the cell biological, as well as for the cell monastic.

Life, mere living, is a profound ideal, pregnant with the memory of a possible happiness, the happiness of protoplasm; and the advocate of moral society must not reckon without his host. He has a rebellious material in hand; his every atom is instinct with a life of its own which it may reassert, upsetting his calculations and destroying his organic systems. Only the physical failure of solitude drove the spirit at first into society, as the moral failure of society may drive it later into solitude again. If anyone said, then, that happiness lies only in society, his maxim would be no less sincere and solid than Saint Bernard's, but it would not be so profound. For, beneath natural society, in the heart of each of its members, there is always an intense and jealous solitude, the sleep of elemental life which can never be wholly broken; and, above natural society, there is always another solitude — a placid ethereal wilderness, the heaven of ideas beckoning the mind.

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HOKUSAI

BY YAICHIRO ISOBE

Ar an hotel in Utsunomiya, Hokusai was gazing steadfastly on a picture that his master, Kano Yusen, was making, in compliance with the landlord's request.

The picture represented a little boy who was trying with a long bamboo pole to take a ripe persimmon from a tree, but who was at his wit's end because it was out of his reach.

When the picture was finished, Yusen, in pride, looked about him, as if challenging the applause of the lookerson. The landlord, needless to say, was struck with admiration at the great beauty of the picture.

'What do you say, Nakashima?' said the painter to Hokusai with a complacent smile.

'In my humble opinion, the pole seems to be a little too long,' answered the lad.

'What! The pole is too long?' cried the master in astonishment.

'Yes, sir, because the child does not stand on tiptoe. If he only stood on tiptoe, the pole would reach the fruit, and no doubt about it,' the young disciple said boldly and frankly.

In an instant the master was crimson with anger. He said: 'You fool! I knew all that, of course, when I drew the pole.'

'Yes, sir, but—'

'What do you think is the subject of the picture? Don't you know that the boy is a mere child, innocent and ignorant?'

'Remember that the most important thing to be observed in painting is to catch the spirit of a picture. I have depicted the boy like this on purpose, taking into consideration the intellectual power of a little child. To stand on tiptoe on such an occasion would be an idea possible only to a man.'

The awkward situation induced the landlord to interfere with:

'You are quite right, sir. Yes, yes, this is a masterpiece of art. How fortunate we are to be favored with such a splendid picture! No, no, it was not from any malicious idea, I believe, that your young disciple ventured such a remark. Let me humbly beg you to forgive him.'

Then turning to Hokusai, the kind landlord advised him to apologize to his master on the spot.

'I hear,' was the single response which the obdurate lad uttered in reply; he only hung his head.

'No, no, my dear landlord,' said the infuriated artist; 'let him alone. It is the height of insolence that such a green hand, unable to understand the painter's idea, should have criticized his master's work.'

Then turning to Hokusai, he said, 'I cannot have you any longer as my disciple. You had better learn painting from the Ukiyoye school. That will be a more suitable study for such a man as you. Go back to Yedo at once.'

Having been dismissed by the hot tempered Yusen, Hokusai returned to

'You are quite right, sir,' said the Yedo and learned European painting

lad.

under the guidance of Shiba Kokan,

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but soon left the latter and became a disciple of Katsukawa Shunsho, a famous painter of the Ukiyoye school. He took this latter step, perhaps, following the sarcastic hint of his former master, Yusen, or rather, more probably out of spite to him; at the same time changing his artist's name into Shuncho. He was still young, and the world was before him. But his critical propensity and his outspoken manner offended his new master as they had done Yusen, and he was once more turned out as a rebel. Then he learned the style of Korin, the famous lacquer artist and painter, and renamed himself Hishikawa Sori.

But he had to pay dearly for his loss of a master, for he was deprived of the means of earning his bread. While he was a disciple of Shunsho, he got some income by producing popular pictures, such as the portraits of the star actors, but now that he posed as a painter after the Korin school, he devoted himself exclusively to the production of drawings in refined taste, which were not so much sought after as genrepictures. So he was reduced to abject poverty, until at last he became a poor vendor of almanacs prepared by himself. One day, when he was walking along the streets of Kuramae in Asakusa, selling the almanacs in a loud voice, he espied his former master Shunsho and his wife coming toward him. Ashamed of his own miserable appearance, he quickly turned his face aside and tried to pass them in haste, when he was discovered by the

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Afterward, when he had occasion to repeat this story, he said that he never had had such an embarrassing experience in his life.

On hastening back to his cottage, quite worn out, Hokusai threw himself down at the desk, and heaving a long sigh, said to himself:

'Ah, I am not born for a painter. I must give up my profession. If I followed some other calling, I should be able to live more comfortably.' He was about to break his pencils in despair, when a voice was heard at the door:

'May I ask you where a painter called Hishikawa Sori lives? I hear that he is living hereabouts,' said a strange voice.

'Sori is my name,' answered the painter, coming to the door. 'Where have you come from?'

'O, is it you? How fortunate that I have found you at home!'

With that, the stranger crossed the threshold with a bow. He looked like the head clerk of a large commercial firm. To all appearance, he was an honest fellow.

'I have come, by my master's order, to ask you for a picture. A new flag is to be made for my master's little son, in celebration of the Boys' Fête, which is to come to him for the first time, so you are requested to draw something on it,' said the man.

'Have you come on purpose for that? But are there not many other painters, who are more noted than I? Why don't you ask some of them?' said the lowspirited painter in a rather blunt tone.

'No. The fact is that the old father of my master, now retired from the world, is very fond of works of art and he saw the other day a picture by you at a certain place; he was quite charmed with it, and insists on getting the flag painted by you, so I have come to ask you the favor,' said the banto.

Hokusai's joy may be better imagined than described. He had been in

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the depth of despair, but now to have found that there was a sympathetic soul who could find any merit in his productions! It was bliss, indeed.

Once more he took up his pencil, which he had been about to break. On the flag he drew in vermilion a picture of Shoki, the deity who can exorcize the spirit of pestilence. It was a masterpiece of art indeed, and for his pains he was paid a sum of two ryo in gold. Only two ryo! the reader may say with a smile. "T is true, the sum is insignificant with the present value of money, but in those days it was a generous payment for a picture. Especially did it count for much with Hokusai, an obscure painter, who had been constantly struggling with daily want.

Given such unlooked-for encouragement, Hokusai resolved to go on with his profession, and worked with redoubled efforts, and yet poverty still looked him in the face, for his pictures after the style of Korin did not please the multitude. It was, indeed, long before his merit was generally recognized. Meanwhile, he never slackened his enthusiasm in the pursuit of his art. He studied several schools of paintingJapanese, Chinese, and European, and created his own style out of these. Whether in nature or in art, there was scarcely any object he did not represent with his masterly pencil. His pictures of magnificent palaces, shrines, temples, personages in court robes, together with hills, water, flowers, birds, and beasts are all marked by genius and originality. He was also a master of caricatures drawn offhand.

When a series of his productions, entitled Hokusai's Stray Sketches, was published, a European who happened to see them was quite fascinated with them, and soon after his return to his country, reproduced several of the pictures. At the demand of a Dutch captain, he produced two volumes of pic

tures, in which were represented the whole life of a common Japanese merchant, and of an ordinary woman from childhood to death. These were taken back by the captain to his native land, where they were much admired as novelties, as proved by the constant orders he subsequently received for his pictures from Holland. Hundreds of these drawings were annually exported to the West from Nagasaki, but the exportation was afterwards forbidden by the Tokugawa government, lest the secrets of Japan should become known abroad.

Hokusai distinguished himself in producing gigantic pictures. In 1804, for instance, when the kaicho of Kannon's idol was held at Gokokuji temple in Koishikawa, Edo, he drew the bust of Dharma on a sheet of paper which was so large as to cover one hundred and twenty mats, greatly to the astonishment of the spectators. He was also no less skilled in miniature drawing.

Once, after making a huge picture of Hotei, one of the Seven Gods of Luck, at the Ekoin temple in Ryogoku, he drew two sparrows on a single grain of rice. The picture was so small that the spectators could scarcely see it with the naked eye. He was also a master of stunt drawing. He could draw in any manner or position - upside-down or sideways, and using for a pencil his fingers, an egg, a tea cup, or a bottle. Hearing of Hokusai's wonderful skill, Tokugawa Iyenari, the then Shogun, whose love of pomp and luxury reminds us of that of Louis the Fourteenth of France, on his way back from hawking in the suburbs, one day, stopped at the Demboin temple in Asakusa and ordered Hokusai and Tani Buncho, another great modern painter, to draw in his presence. When Hokusai's turn came, he proceeded before the Shogun with no least sign of

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