WORLD CONSCIOUSNESS
_The Third Side of the Triangle_
... For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent.
Now round us spreads the watery plain--
Oh, might our marges meet again!
1
I had gone out to the _Katori-maru_ to inspect my quarters. I always
loved to get away from shore, even if only in a launch or sampan; it was
so much cleaner and fresher on the bay. That afternoon it was altogether
too attractive out there, and the city of Kobe lay so snugly below the
hills that I decided to remain on board till late in the evening, and
missed the last launch. I hailed a sampan. In this, with the wind
splashing the single sail and the spray scattering all about us, we
slipped romantically back to the American Hatoba. It was my last
entrance to Kobe.
All of the next day I kept changing trains and creeping over Japanese
hills and rice-fields in my devious and indirect route to Yokohama by
way of Japan's national shrine, Yamada Ise. A few days later I was on
board the _Katori-maru_, the newest type of Japanese shrine, the modern
commercial floating shrine, named after one of the most ancient of
shrines in Japan. The Katori shrine is said to have been founded some
twenty-five hundred years ago during the reign of the mythical first
emperor, Jimmu Tenno. It was dedicated to deities who possessed great
military skill and has always been patronized mainly by soldiers.
Transferring shrines from land to sea is a hazardous procedure. For me,
however, I was ready to give my offering most willingly as long as it
brought me to Seattle. There were too many people willing to patronize
floating shrines at that time for me to be too particular about deities.
[Illustration: FUJIYAMA
Japanese roofs may be monotonous--but never so is Fujiyama
Photo from Brown Bros.]
[Illustration: SEA, EARTH AND SKY
All are one in this glorious Pacific World
Photo from Brown Bros.]
For a moment, as we slipped away from the pier, I felt what a dying man
is said to feel when the flash-like review of life's experiences course
through his sinking consciousness. I saw Japan and all its valleys, its
dirt and its sublimity; and with all its past confusions I loved it.
Waiting for a final glimpse of Fuji left me idle enough to observe the
little things about me. There was, for instance, the two-by-two-by-five
sailor who was showing two Japanese girls through the "shrine" he was
serving. I followed them about the ship. He was explaining to them
various mysteries.
The Sailor: "Kore wa otoko no bath. [This is the men's bath.]" To the
minds of these Japanese maidens such a distinction was surprising.
The Sailor: "Kore wa second class. [This is second class.]" This was
like treading on sacred ground to these lowly born mites.
The Sailor: "Kore wa kitsu en shitsu. [This is the smoking-room.]" Why a
special room for so simple a service--and why men only?
He led them above to the hospital. He never made any comments, they
asked him no questions, but followed, single file, as is proper for
Japanese girls, agape with curiosity. They passed the life-saving
equipment. A tiny voice ventured a question. An amazed member of the
Japanese Government (it was a government subsidized vessel) said, with
semi-scorn:
"Kore wa? _Boat._ [This? _Boat._]" And they went below.
2
All of that forenoon, waiting for the _Katori-maru_ to slip away from
the pier, I watched for Fujiyama, that exquisite pyramid (to the summit
of which I had climbed twice), but it was veiled in mist. I wanted to
see what it looked like from the sea, just as I had seen what the sea
and the universe looked like from its peak. All afternoon, as Japan was
receding into the past, I tried to distinguish old Fuji, but there was
only a glittering edge, like a sword, beneath the low, bright sun. After
dinner I went on deck and there in all that simple splendor which has
made it the wonder of the world, stood Fujiyama, with a soft, sunset
glow beneath its peak. The symbolic sword had vanished. And I felt that
in all those years and miles and space which gather in my memory as that
single thing--the Pacific Ocean--nothing transcends in loveliness the
last view of Fuji from the sea.
Then for two days the world seemed to swoon in mist. The fog-horn kept
blowing drearily every two minutes; yet the steamer never slackened its
speed for a moment; in fact, we made more miles those two days than
during the clear days that followed. We had taken the extreme northern
route and were soon in a cold latitude. The fog became crisp, as though
threatening to crystallize, and when I stood on the forward deck it was
almost like being out in a blizzard. The siren continued to emit its
melancholy wail across a wilderness of waves lost in mist. One could not
see the length of the ship. At midnight I woke, startled by the sudden
cessation of the propellers. For three hours we were stationary, owing
to engine trouble. The steamer barely rocked, giving me the sensation of
the deep as nothing ever did before. It was at once weird and lovely,
and in the darkness I could imagine our vessel as lone and isolated, a
thing lost in an open wilderness of space. The siren continued moaning
like the wail of a child in the night, and once I thought I heard
another siren off in the distance. We started off again and from then on
didn't once slacken our speed in the least, so large, so spacious, so
unfrequented is the Pacific in these days.
The fog hung close for so many days that a rumor went round that the
captain was unable to get his bearings. With neither sun nor stars to
rely on men's best instruments are altogether inadequate. At half-past
nine o'clock one evening, however, the steel blinds were closed over the
port-holes. The ship began to pitch and roll. The waves rushed at us and
broke against the iron cheek of the vessel. The fittings on deck rolled
back and forth, and those passengers unused to the sea clung to their
berths.
Only when we were within three days of the American coast did the sun
come out. For over a week we had been in a dull-gray world which was
becoming terribly depressing. We were considerably farther north than I
had expected to be.
Five days after our departure, I was again at the 180th meridian, and
enjoyed what only a very eager, active person could enjoy,--a
forty-eight-hour day. This time, going eastward, we gained a day. I also
had the pleasure of being within fifty degrees of the north pole just as
three years before I had been within fifty degrees of the south pole. In
other words, I had touched two points along the 180th meridian which
were six thousand miles away from each other, or twice the distance from
New York to San Francisco.
Calculations are somewhat misleading at times. For instance, when we
were near the Aleutian Islands, I chanced to compare the records of that
day's run as posted in the first saloon with those posted in the second
saloon. The first read 4,240 miles from Yokohama; the second, 4,235
miles. Japanese handling of figures made the prow of the ship five miles
nearer its destination than the stern. Japanese historians also have a
tendency to make such innocent mistakes in their imperialistic
calculations. Japan's feet do not seem to be able to keep pace with her
desires.
As though to investigate this phenomenon, a little bird,--slightly
larger than a sparrow, with the same kind of feathered back, but with a
white breast, flitted down upon the deck before me,--and began hopping
about. It approached to within two feet of me, then sneaked into a warm
place out of sight. A stowaway from birdland, stealing a ride and
planning, most likely, to enter America without a passport. Perhaps it
thought that being near the stern of the boat, according to the
calculations above quoted, it could still remain beyond the three-mile
limit.
Then the homeward-bound spirit took possession of me,--that selfsame
realization of my direction which had come over me upon sight of the
Australian coast three years previously, a psychological twisting which
baffled me for a time. Another day and we were within the last square
marked off by the latitudinal and longitudinal lines,--the nearest I had
been to America in nearly five years. To remind me of my wanderings, the
flags of the nations hung in the dining-saloon: under nearly every one
of them I had at some time found hospitality.
3
The reader who has followed me thus far has been with me about three
months on the sea. What to the Greeks and the Romans was the
Mediterranean, the Pacific will be to us seventy times over. Already
there is a wealth of literature and of science which has come to us
through the inspiration of that great waterway. For Darwin and Stevenson
and O'Brien the Pacific has been mother of their finest passions. In the
near future, our argosies will cross and recross those tens of thousands
of miles as numerously as those of the Phoenicians on the
Mediterranean in antiquity. They will bring us back the teas and spices
and silks of the Orient. But there are those of us who have watched the
"White Shadows" of the Pacific who would wish that something were
brought away besides the ephemeral materials. For there is in the sea a
kinship with the infinite and the absolute, and who studies its moods
comes nearer understanding life.
I wandered along one night with a New Zealand man, without knowing where
he was leading me. Suddenly we came, by way of a narrow pathway, against
a wall of darkness. We were at the seashore. It was as though we had
come to the world's end and the white glistening breakers arrived as
messengers from eternity, warning us against venturing farther. I
strained my eyes to see into that pitch-black gulch, but I might just as
well have shut my eyes and let the persistent breakers tell the story of
the sea in their own way. Afterward I often made my way out to that
beach and sat for hours, or trod the sands till night left of the sea
nothing but mournful whisperings.
One day in August, when the first snow fell over our little winter world
in the far South, I had climbed the hills up to the belt of wildwood
that girds the city of Dunedin. The very joy of life was in the air.
Keenly I sensed the larger season,--that of human kinship merged in the
centuries. I looked across the hills to mountains I had known; but it
was then not the Alps I saw, not the Rockies, the Aeta Roa under the
Southern Cross, nor yet the Himalayas nor the snow-packed barriers of
the Uriankhai, the unrenowned Turgan group. In truth, I was not seeing
impassable peaks at all, but imprisoned ranges which were themselves
trying to outreach their altitudinal limitations. It was a world
consciousness which was mine, and I towered far above the highest peaks,
above the world itself. I saw no single group, no political sections nor
geographical divisions, the conquest of ridges, the commingling of
noises, the concord of peoples. And when men come to this world
consciousness they will recognize and accept all, include the barrier
and the plain. They will see these great, sheer rugged peaks knifing the
floating clouds, yielding to the creeping glaciers, yet one and all,
when released sweeping down the valleys as impassioned rivers, filling
the lowest depths of earth, depths deeper than the sea, lower than the
deserts. In such moments of world consciousness men will have to step
downward from the bottom of the sea and upward from the summit of
McKinley. Then barriers will become beacons. Mankind lives at sea-level.
We care little about our neighbors over the ranges. That mental attitude
makes barriers real and valleys dark. But when we turn them into beacons
we shall climb the barriers in order to look into the valleys of our
neighbors and they will become the ladders of heaven and the light unto
nations. That is the lesson of the sea.
At present we live at a sea-level, but beneath and behind the barriers,
are the peaks of earth. Hence walls of houses are as great barriers as
mountains. Hence even thoughts are barriers and ideals become terrible,
cold, insurmountable prominences.
But in world consciousness, which is the lesson of the sea, we do not
reject anything,--the religions, the political parties, the
anti-religions, and the negations,--but we bring them to the level of
human understanding by absorption, by taking them in. That is the story
of the sea.
The ocean breaks incessantly before us, but only the one majestic wave
thrills as it rises and overleaps the rocky barrier. A forest is densely
grown, yet only the stately, beautiful tree stirs the forest-lover. The
street swarms with human beings all of whom are material for the
friend-maker, yet only one of the mass, in passing, steeps the day's
experience in the essence of love. But loving that one wave, or tree, or
being does not shut us against the source of its becoming; rather does
it teach us the possibilities latent in the mass. That is the moral of
the sea.
But what is the sea? How can we know the sea? Is it water, space,
depth? Can we measure it in miles, in the days required to traverse it,
in steamship lines, by the turning of the screws, or by the system of
the fourth dimension? To me who have been round the greatest sea on
earth comes the realization that I have seen only a narrow line of it,
and that I can only believe that the rest is what it has been said to
be. Yet my faith is founded on my knowledge of the faithfulness of the
sea.
The sea, we sometimes say, has its moods, but rather should they be
called enthusiasms. It is really not the sea at all to which we refer,
but to something which in the vague world of infinitude is in itself a
sea whipping the surface of an unfathomable wonder. The sea's moods are
not in its breakers, any more than is the surface phenomenon which
floors the region between our atmosphere and ether, the story of our
earth. We cannot reach down beneath the breakers and learn the secret of
the heart of the sea. In ourselves, as in the sea, we obtain a record of
that tremendous silence which is the harbinger of all sound, as the
heavens are of all color.
One day in New Zealand I witnessed a conflict between the earth and the
sea. A tremendous wind swept north-westward, and pressed heavily down
upon the shore. It sent the sand scurrying back into the sea. Even the
breakers, like the sand, fell back in furious spray like the waves of
sea-horses,--back into the ocean. The entire length of the beach for
three miles was alive with retreating spray, mingled with the bewildered
sand-legions scurrying at my ankles.
One night, on the shores of Otago Harbor, the moon, blasted and blunted
by heavy clouds, had started on its journey. In a little cave huddled a
cloud of black night. We had spread the faithful embers of our camp fire
so they could not touch one another, and wanting touch they died in the
darkness. We had put the curse of loneliness upon each of them. The
little cave had become only a darker spot on a dark landscape,--a
landscape so rough, so rare and rugged, reaching the sea and the
western sky of night. So rough, so unformed, so uncompleted. The maker
of lands was beating against it impatiently, rushing it, forming it.
What uncanny projections, what sandy cliffs! For ages the wind and sea
have been whipping them into shape. Yet man could remove them with a
blast or two. For thousands of miles, all round the rim of the great
Pacific, the same process is going on, day and night. While upon land,
man has continued working out his mission in the same persistent,
unconscious manner.
O Maker of lands' ends, O Sea, when will man be formed? When will the
conflicts among men cease? They have tried to curb one another and to
subject one another to slavish uses, even and kempt. But still, after
ages of whipping and lashing, they are still unfinished as though never
to be formed. Are the various little groups which lie so far apart,
scattered by some ancient camper, to die for want of the touch of
comrade, like those embers in the darkness of that empty cavelet?
Here round the Pacific we dwell, each in his own little hollow. May not
this vast, generous ocean become the great experiment station for human
commonalty, for distinction without extinction? The dreams that centered
in the other great seas--the Mediterranean, the Atlantic--were only
partially fulfilled. But here at the point where East is West, it ought
to be possible, because of the very obvious differences, to maintain
relations without irritating encroachment. There was a time when
passionate desire justified a man taking a woman from another with the
aid of a club. To-day the decent man knows that however much he may
love, only mutual consent makes relationship possible. And from the
frenzy of untutored souls let those who feel repugnance withdraw till
the force of a higher morality makes the rest of the world follow in its
wake.
... now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain:
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
BOOK TWO
DISCUSSION OF NATIVE PROBLEMS--PERSONAL AND SOCIAL