DIVINE INERTIA

"We have not the spirit to call our souls our own; no, nor even to entertain the belief that we have souls." This is the conclusion to which Mr. Farrar of The Bookman comes at the end of an editorial in the current issue. Why is it, Mr. Farrar wonders, than the people of America prefer to get their opinions ready-made instead of making them for themselves?

Why is it? "Because," says Mr. Farrar, it would require a definite stand on our parts, a stand based on convictions, on a mode of conduct the mere thought of which causes us these days to be bored." One might conclude from this that Mr. Farrar's ideal American is the alert active person whose been eye takes in any given situation at a glance, whose firm feet immediately plant them selves immovably on one side of the fence in question, whose active mind thereafter either views with alarm what lies beyond the fence or points proudly to what he stands beside on the right side.

Perhaps Mr. Farrar's diagnosis of the American frame of mind is incorrect; perhaps he does Americans a great injustice; perhaps he credits them with a virtue which they do not deserve. But if his diagnosis he correct, wherefore be sorrowful? Perhaps the beauties of serene contemplation are lost upon Mr. Farrar completely, but certainly be fails to perceive the possibilities of such contemplation in the particular case of the American people. The present American frame of mind is hardly a thing to be admired; but its future is promising. It is not beyond the limits of the possible that the present American example of stupid boredom is but a transitional period of intertia, a static state of incubation, preparing the way for an eventual elevation to the heights of serene contemplation. To this end is the "Great Creed of Inaction", and Mr. Farrar's ideal lies in the other direction. "The truly wise man ignores reputation; the perfect man ignores self; the divine man ignores action." This is but the dictum of Chuang Tizu, the greatest of Taoist philosophers, and Taoism does not exert any very remarkable influence in this country; it can be no more than a suggestion. But even a suggestion that there is more than mere laziness in the American inertia is not to be lightly cast aside.