“What I mean is this.  May I explain by a quotation?  A sentence from a certain review of the poet Coleridge’s life and work is as follows:  ’Devoted as he was to mystic and ideal contemplation, to abstractions of mind and spirit, he naturally became untrustworthy in every relation of life.’

“That represents, in an exaggerated form, the ideal of the Western mind.  They are, though they would not so name themselves, gross materialists; and the tendency is increasing on them daily and yearly.  Those who protest occasionally against current thought, who appear like prophets with bitter invective and words of warning on their lips, are swept away by the tide, and write of trade and treaties, of wars of principle and convenience.  The very divines are tainted.  ‘Live your life to the uttermost,’ they cry.

“And in the Western mind the tendency once rooted gathers force from every quarter.  As a necessary concomitant of the restless habit, the enshrining of the ‘effective man’ in their proudest temples, comes an extreme deference to other people, a heated straining of the ears to catch the murmurs of that vague uncertain heart—­Public Opinion.  And why?  It follows:  if it is in this life alone that triumphs must be won—­if on this stage alone the drama is to be played out, and the time is short—­it is that imperious will that you must conciliate; therefore employ every power to gain the art of so doing.

“So intent are the Westerns on this drama, so wrapped up in the actors, so anxious to declaim and strut, that they forget to what end the play exists:  they have left the spectators out for whom alone the scenes are enacted, and who, though apparently so silent and motionless, are the raison d’etre of the whole performance.  The play must and will continue through the ages; but the wise, the enlightened, beat down, and in one sharp encounter overcome, the lower desire of being seen and applauded, and are content to sit and watch—­the nobler task.

“For we must remember that it is not the drama itself, tragedy or comedy, fascinating as it be, that we are here to watch—­but the mind of the Being that animates the whole, can be here descried and here alone, as in a mirror faintly:  it is not only the man who fumes and paces up and down for a few moments and then is called away; but the vast Existence behind, that knows what the play means and will not tell us, and that pushes the players on and off as He will.

“And here we find ourselves, with our tiny and uncertain space of time bounded by the Infinities at either end, with the huge puzzle set before us.  A method has been invented, is now traditional, of closing the eyes easily and thoughtlessly to the whole; and we are content to catch that contagion from our predecessors:  we eat and drink, we work and play, and stifle the restless questioning that springs up so resolutely in our spaces of solitude here; and what will it do in the immeasurable hereafter?