TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
Kumamoto, June, 1893.

Dear Hendrick,—I am not quite sure that you are right about the Oriental view of things. It is very difficult to understand at first. It is not want of refinement or sensibility to beautiful things. It is rather a tendency to silence and secrecy in regard to the highest emotions. So that a cultivated Japanese never even speaks of his wife and family, or hints of his fondness for them. Of course, our idea is nobler and higher. But it is a question with me whether it cannot be, and has not been, developed to excess. I think we have filled the whole universe with an ideal of woman. Star-swarms and all cosmical glories exist for us only in an infinity of passional pantheism. I suspect that we see Nature especially through the beauty of woman. A splendid tree, a fragrant bud, delicacy of petals, songs of birds, undulations of hills, mobility of waters, sounds of foliage, murmur of breezes and their caress, laughter of streamlets, even the gold light—do not all these things remind us of woman? You might cite the ruggedness of oaks and the grimness of crags as masculine. True, we have visions of Nature as masculine—for rugged and mighty contrasts. But how enormously preponderant is the eternal feminine! Even our language is a language of gender,—in which I think the feminine predominates. But in our thought the masculine at once suggests the feminine, and creates a new idea. All precious things, too, remind us of what is not masculine, because “far and from the uttermost coasts is the price of her.”

Now the Oriental sees Nature in no such way. His language has no gender. He does not think of a young girl when he sees a palm, nor of the lines of a beautiful body when he sees the undulations of the hills. Neither does he see Nature as masculine. He sees it as neuter. His geographical nomenclature shows this. He sees things as they are. The immediate inference would be that he finds less enjoyment in them. But his art shows that he finds more. He sees in Nature much that we can‘t see at all. He sees beauty in stones,—in common stones,—in clouds, fogs, smoke, curling water, shapes of trees, shapes of insects. In my friend’s alcove is a stone. When you can learn that that stone is more beautiful than a beautiful painting, you can begin to understand that there is another way of seeing Nature. In my own garden there are a number of large stones. Their value is seven hundred dollars. No American would give five cents for them—no! he would not dream of taking them as a gift—no! he would consider himself highly insulted by the offer! Then why are they worth seven hundred dollars? Because they are beautiful. You would say: “I can’t see it!” You can’t see it because you see all Nature through the idea of woman. And it is just faintly possible (I don’t say certain) that our way—your way of seeing Nature is all wrong. It is like peeping through an atmosphere which makes everything iridescent and deflects the lines of forms.

Now, why do I suspect that our way of looking at Nature may not be the highest,—besides the plain fact that it is not according to the Eternal order of things? I suspect it because the evolution of the ideal has been chiefly physical. It has not been an ideal of soul. Is the soul of a woman more beautiful than that of a man—outside of maternal tenderness? You have just had a divine glimpse of two souls—excuse the personal question (for it is a highly important one): which seemed to you the largest and deepest?—in which were the glories more profound and radiant? And is it not essential that the woman-beauty of soul must be the lesser; for its scope must be limited by its eternal duty. We are in the presence, however, of the undeniable fact that we rarely get glimpses of the higher possibilities of the man-soul. Life is too hard and bitter. But in the twilight of every home one sees the woman-souls glowing like fireflies. We think only of the lights we see. The circling darknesses are opaque to us,—like burnt-out suns.

Reading over the list of things in your notebook I was impressed by several facts. It is well to set down everything that impresses you. But—I cannot help thinking that you do not look for the highest,—that you miss a universe of beautiful things. The obtrusive, the eccentric, the sharply bitter, the “Distorted Souls” as you call them, naturally compel attention first,—just as in real life the forward, the selfish, the aggressive, force themselves upon us. It is of the highest possible value, as a means of self-preservation, to understand them. But I suspect that it is of no value at all to draw them, to photograph them, to give them artistic treatment except in a contrast-study. They are not beautiful. They are not good. They are, using the word in the Miltonic sense, obscene—like owls. On the other hand the beautiful in life must be sought, and coaxed, and caressed to make it show its colours. It does not appear very often spontaneously. Yet I feel convinced it is all about us. It travels on railroads too, and lodges at hotels. It fights for life against ugliness and wickedness and apathy and selfishness: it is Ormuzd against Ahriman. Now what is the artist’s moral duty? (Of course he may take any subject he pleases and be great in it.) But what is his duty in the eternal order of things, to art and to ethics? Is it not to extract the gold from the ore,—the rubies and emeralds from the rubble? I think it is—though many may laugh at me. Thus newer and higher ideals are created. We advance only by new ideals. I don’t mean to say we should make statues of pure gold, or a table, like that of some Caliph, out of a single emerald. But I think that in modern life we should use the dross and slag only when their lightness, worthlessness, or rudeness brings out in higher relief the light of the pure jewel, the weight of the pure metal, the value of that which gives the radiance or the gravity. And in the order of research I would seek the lodes and veins first;—the rest is always easy to find and handle, though requiring much scientific skill, of course, to use artistically.

There is a world, I suppose, almost as barren as the Alkali Plains, where convention has strangled all feeling, and where the development of selfish capacities has choked the other growths. But either below this world or above it there are Americas to discover—full of warmth, light, and beauty—continents chained to each other by snow-peaks, watered by Amazons and Mississippis.

Below, I think, more than above,—for the nearer to Nature, the nearer to truth. And the value, artistically, of our high-pressure civilization seems to me to be that its monstrosities and glooms and tragedies infernal give an opportunity for the grandest contrasts ever made. What I would pray you to do is “to put a lily in the mouth of Hell”—using one of Carlyle’s phrases. Then the petals of the lily will change into pure light, like those of the Lotus of Amida Buddha....

Good-bye, with affectionate wishes,