In a philosophy devoted to the identities the dualistic distinctions between good and evil fail of their meanings and the orthodox ethics is thrown to confusion. The doctrine of good and evil in the medieval theologies was comparatively simple; it consisted in forming fixed categories of right and wrong by absolute standards. But as life was never static but ever flowing it was difficult even during the vogue of dualism to fit practice to the theory and it became easier to modify the theory than to enforce right conduct. Extremists like William Blake denied the sacred codes in toto and reversed their categories. Milder men, like Emerson and Browning, attempting reconciliation, extended toward Satan a generous hospitality and appropriated his evil as an agency in the good. Both thinkers abandoned the restrictive codes and trusted to the soul's original energy. It requires but one more step to reach the monistic plane and but a little more courage to give up the attempt at reconciliating differences that pertain only to a past philosophy and construe life on wholly new terms. Probably Whitman in general would adopt the saying of Emerson: "Virtue is the adherence in action to the nature of things: The only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong is what is against it." And if the retort be made: "These impulses may be from below," Whitman would respond as cheerfully as did the elder sage: "If I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil; no law can be sacred to me but that of my nature." However Whitman is more inclined to deny the validity of the terms good and bad altogether and would use them-as Blake did in his "Marriage of Heaven and Hell"-only as traditional counters of speech, very much as one still

speaks of the rising and setting of the sun. "I resist anything," he said, "more than my own diversity." "I will stand by my own nativity pious or impious so be it." "Clear and sweet is my soul and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul." Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things he is vexed at "showing the best and dividing it from the worst." "Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me. I stand indifferent." "What is called good is perfect and what is called evil is just as perfect." In a poem that recalls Emerson's "Mithridates" he declares that in earth's orbic scheme "newts, crawling things in slime and mud, poisons, the barren soil, the evil men, the slag and hideous rot" are all enclosed. Or in other words of his: "The roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man." He thinks the elementary laws do not need to be worked over and believes that from the unflagging pregnancy health will emerge. The problem of modern life is not as in medieval days to achieve righteousness but to entertain sincerity and truth. And in the last thought of the universe "all is truth." Everything, inevitable and limitless, appears in the line of its inheritance and is allowed the "eternal purports of the earth." "I sing the endless finalés of things,

I say Nature continues, glory continues,

I praise with electric voice,

For I do not see one imperfection in the universe,

And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe."

Thus the motive of Whitman's entire gospel is to establish man in undisputed mastery over himself. The center of authority is shifted from what is without the

soul to the soul itself. The ethics of authority is forever void. Responsibility attaches to the self. And no one ever taught more insistently than Whitman the impossibility of eluding "the law of promotion and transformation" that inheres in one's own acts and thoughts. Theft comes back to the thief as love returns to the lover. "A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the universe."

The intention of the old theology was to reduce man, to make him submissive, to take from his autonomy. The new proposes to exalt man, to deny mastery, to prove capacity for self-rule. The old convicted man of sin, initiated a division and conflict within the self, filled him with lamentations, postponed his rewards. The new knows but one compact indivisible impulse, permits man's original energy its joyful utterance, yields his pains and pleasures now. The old tended to develop in man a sense of alienism in the midst of all cosmic forms. The new seeks to place him in rapport with the universe, to arouse the abysmal passions whereby he becomes the lover of the cosmos, the interpreter of its occult meanings and an accomplice in its ends.

THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST.

I.

There are certain periods in history described as awakenings and new births, during which, after long quiescence, the human spirit rouses itself from stupor, breaks the bonds of code and custom, and strikes out in new directions, makes discoveries of new continents and skies, is creative and expansive in unwonted fields, and attains thereby a new plane of consciousness. The sign of awakening is an unusual activity-an activity vague and unregulated at first, but with an ever-increasing definiteness of purpose. The expansion is commonly at once geographical, scientific, and theosophical. The accidents of history determine the direction of discovery and provide the particular external materials for the spirit's use, but the whole movement accrues eventually to character and becomes permanent in an enlarged racial consciousness. Egypt, India and Persia at some time passed through such spiritual epochs, but the awakening of the peoples of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is known above all other similar events as the Renaissance. There was then a genuine new birth of the human spirit, an advance for two mystic centuries into a new condition of freedom, an elevation of mind and soul such as the race had experienced before but once or twice in its history. The vague unrest of the Crusades was an early sign of gesta

tion, of awakening energy. The new birth was announced by the revival of the sense of wonder and by the desire for exploration. Undiscovered lands and seas offered the opportunity of physical expansion. The unsolved problems of the stars excited the mind to explore the heavens. The accident of the fall of the Greek empire occasioned the migration of scholars westward; their absorption in the humanistic movement inaugurated by Petrarch and his followers increased the scope of the New Learning and led to a more complete resuscitation of the past. To the wisdom of the Jews were added the forgotten speculations of the Greeks. It happened that Virgil was the first of the classic texts to be printed, but Greek was the favorite symbol of scholarship; Homer was printed in 1488; Aristotle in 1498, and Plato in 1513. The affiliation with the Greek spirit was the primary fact of the Italian renaissance. Through the retention of the germs of spiritual freedom contained in the literature of Hellas, the desire for knowledge was quickened, the sense of the beautiful was restored, and the horizons of speculation were widened through all the western lands. The immediate direction of energy, the materials upon which the new life was expended, were the accidents of the environment. That which was permanent was a certain elevation of soul and freedom of spirit—a freedom that still gives a motive to the modern world.

The nineteenth century will be known in history as the beginning of another European renaissance. An expansive movement in human affairs became conspicuous about the middle of the century, the tide of which was felt upon the farthest shore. An old order was closed in Europe by the popular revolutions at the end of the