manner, with facts of life about which the most extremely unjust misconceptions exist in the public mind, and which have no connection with anything vicious or perverted. It was submitted that this is the view held by standard authorities in medicine and psychology. Sir Chartres found, however, that although the book was dignified and restrained in manner it presented an appeal for the recognition by decent people that sexual inversion exists and is not the fault of the person who suffers from it; therefore he judged the book an obscene libel and ordered all copies of it destroyed. Meanwhile discussion of the censorship question continues both in England and in Ireland. Some of the best and wittiest things that have been said about the Censorship Bill in Ireland are contained in an editorial article by George Bernard Shaw in the Irish Statesman. He says the question is not merely what books the Irish are going to allow each other to read. 'Ireland is now in a position of special and extreme peril. Until the other day we enjoyed a factitious prestige as a thorn in the side of England, or shall I say, from the military point of view, the Achilles' heel of England? We were idealized by Pity, which always idealizes the victim and the underdog. The island was hymned as one of saints, heroes, bards, and the like more or less imaginary persons. Every Don Quixote in Europe and America, and even actually in China, made a Dulcinea of Kathleen ni Houlihan and the Dark Rosaleen. We thought ourselves far too clever to take ourselves at the Quixotic valuation; but in truth even the most cynically derisive Dubliners (detestable animals!) overrated us very dangerously; and when we were given a free hand to make good we found ourselves out with a shock that has taken all the moral pluck out of us as completely as physical shell shock. We can recover our nerve only by forcing ourselves to face new ideas, proving all things, and standing by that. which is good. We are abject cowards when confronted by new moral ideas, and insanely brave when we go out to kill one another with a physical equipment of artificial volcanoes and atmospheres of poison, and a mental equipment appropriate to stone axes and flint. arrow heads. We incite our young men to take physical risks which would have appalled the most foolhardy adventurers of the past; but when it is proposed to allow a young woman to read a book which treats sexual abnormalities as misfortunes to be pitied instead of horrors to be screamed at and stoned, an Irishman arises in the face of England One's student days would have been happier had one known that there existed means, easily available, whereby the intellect might be increased, the memory made infallible, and all anxiety as to the result of an examination removed. For this information most students' gratitude would have been unbounded; surely this generation of students, similarly situated, will welcome the information. One Valentino Kräutermann, M.D., of Arnstadt in Thüringen, published at his home town and at the larger Leipzig, in 1730, a delightful little 16mo which he called Der Thüringische Theophrastus Paracelsus Wunder- und Kräuterdoctor oder der Curieuse und Vernünftige ZauberArzt... that is to say, 'The Thuringian Theophrastus Paracelsus Miracle-and Herb-Doctor or the Unusual and Rational Wizard-Physician . . .' Although the volume is nearly two centuries old, no one acquainted with modern German will find any difficulty in reading it. The only difference is in the type and orthography: the German had not learned to cut out superfluous 'h's,' 't's,' 'e's' etc., to change every 'c' of the Latin tongues into 'k,' or to print Latin words in his own hideous type. The book is all Magic; not Satanic Magic, the author is careful to explain, Magic, the author is careful to explain, not 'Teufelische Magie,' not 'Zauberey oder schwartze Kunst,' but 'die mathematische und künstliche Magie,' 'Magie Naturalis.' And the author was assuredly a wonder. He could cure everything from warts to cancer, from toothache to jaundice. Not the body alone, but the mind also received his medical attention - and here is where the student comes in. Dr. Kräutermann could make all sorts of things animate and inanimate appear in sleep; the anxious student will have special interest in knowing 'how one may dream at night what is going to happen to him.' The means is perfectly easy: 'Wear the jewel, onyx, on hand or neck and it will happen.' Now the student worrying how he is going to come out on his examinations need worry no more; buy, borrow or no, we shall not say steal an onyx ring, wear it, and there you are. He had an especial eye for students. We have a whole chapter devoted to defective memory, the doctor saying: 'For strengthening the memory, particularly in students, one finds recorded in various works many kinds of medicaments. Some recommend the gall of a partridge rubbed on the temples once a month.' Then he tells a story from John Schramm's Fasciculus Historiarum about a Catholic priest's losing his powers of reading and writing while he was otherwise normal by drinking his own blood, and recovering his lost powers a year after by doing the same thing at the same time and at the same place. He does not warn his readers that Schramm's Historiae are nearly all of them 'stories' in the nursery sense of the word; nor could he have realized this himself, for he swallowed them whole without a gag. Then we are told: 'The best white frankincense, finely powdered, drunk in wine when the weather is cold, or in a decoction of grapes in the summer, at sunrise and also at noon and in the evening when the moon is waxing, strengthens the memory beyond all measure.' Rhazes and others extol the virtues of the tongue of the Hoopoe hung on the neck as an amulet. A splendid thing for strengthening the memory is Spiritus Magnanimitatis Laurenbergii, for which the prescription is as follows: 'Take half a handful each of basil, marjoram, salvia, balm-mint, and valerian; as much as can be taken up by three fingers of the flowers of borage, salvia, primrose, rosemary, and mayflower. These, shredded, put in malmsey and let soak; then take of this infusion of wine one portion, put it in a glass and bury it in an ant-hill in such a way that the ants can creep in; when, say, four or five handfuls have fallen in, stir it with a stick and drown them. Pour the remainder of the infusion upon this and set it fourteen days in the sun. Then distill it, adding one ounce each of confection of sumac and cinnamon, half a scruple of saffron and twelve grains of and the effect of which is so great that if a man reads or hears it once, he will not forget his life long.' As it has no less than nineteen ingredients, I do not copy it; however, the ingredients, thoroughly pulverized and mixed with each other, are to be distilled in an alembic over a carefully graduated fire and the oil so separated. The use is, for the first two months, one drop a day and the nostrils and ears touched with it; the next two months, every third day; the next two months, twice a week; the next, once a week; thereafter for a whole year, once a fortnight. We are not astonished to read: Thut grosse Wunder' it works great miracles. Let no student, then, (1) fail to appreciate the lectures, (2) forget what he has learned, or (3) worry over the result of his exams; follow the injunctions of Dr. Kräutermann and be happy. MUSIC COMES INTO HE advent of the im THE proved phonograph and of electrically recorded disks, as M. René Dumesnil points out in a recent number of the Mercure de France, is at last putting music on a plane with the other arts. Music can now be frozen' or 'canned' for future use in a way analogous to the 'freezing' of poetry upon the printed page. Musical art has long suffered from a disadvantage which other arts do not know. When a sculptor hammers LETTERS AND THE ARTS It can be looked at, felt of, and even copied, for thousands of years, or at least until someone who does not under HOMAGE TO DON JACINTO 449 materials are used, the result will stand until armies, barbarian or civilized, rush over the site, or until it is replaced by Bagaria in El Sol, Madrid SPAIN CHOSE on December first to pay a unique tribute to Jacinto Benavente, foremost of living Spanish playwrights. The dramatist's admirers were asked by newspapers throughout the country to mail to him, in the capital, cards upon which they had noted the title of that one of his plays which they most preferred. Literally thousands answered the call, and the mails from every province were choked for three days with congratulatory letters and cards addressed simply, Don Jacinto Benavente, Madrid. Bagaría, the brilliant Madrid cartoonist, ironically depicts above the playwright's calm acceptance of the laurel wreath from the lion of Spain. out a bust, the result of his effort is a solid bit of matter that stays where it is put, tangible and immutable, until someone comes and puts it elsewhere. stand it, or thinks ill of it, decides to destroy it. Then actual effort must be put to its destruction. When an architect builds a building, if reasonably durable another structure. Similarly, the art of painting produces a tangible, permanent thing; the canvas endures to be enjoyed until, accidentally or purposely, it is destroyed. Since the fifteenth century the literary arts have had the same advantage. Before the invention of writing, the poet recited his poem, and as soon as silence fell again it was gone. Its only trace was faint in the memory of his hearers, and only through their memory could it reach posterity. But when it became possible to write the poem down, and then to print it in any number of copies, the limit on the size of the poet's audience fell away. Now the only limit is imposed by the poet's own ability to interest his audience; if he writes things that interest the world, the world will eventually see to it that there are copies enough of his work so that anyone who wishes may enjoy it at any time. In music, however, the old handicap still held. The violinist moved his bow across the strings and music existed, he stopped and the music stopped. It existed within a certain duration of time only; when the final chord died the away memory of it alone was left. But the marble statue does not die away; it stands there as solid and as beautiful as ever whether we are looking at it or not. And the book stands on the shelf waiting to be opened whenever we wish to enjoy the poem again. The invention of printing did not result in quite the same emancipation in music as it did in literature. For between the printed sheet of music and the mind of the hearer are two processes; the music has to be read and it has to be played or sung. A few people, fortunate in natural gifts and education, can go to a library where there are music scores but. no instruments, and sit and enjoy music: simply by reading it over. Most of us, however, whether we can play or not, find it necessary to hear music to get anything from it at all. In other words, in what we hear, two creative acts are necessary, the composing and the playing. One way to avoid this difficulty would be to teach everyone to play one or more instruments. But even the achievement of this fantastic ideal would not produce the result that is, as it were, being thrown in our laps by modern science. The term 'canned music' need no longer be an epithet of scorn now that the 'canning' process is really successful. It is quite as legitimate to have Beethoven symphonies on records waiting to be heard whenever you wish, as to have Shakespeare tragedies on your shelf waiting to be read. In Europe, interest in phonographs and records has grown enormously. Many new companies are springing up and issuing records; the music of the present and of the past is being recorded until it will soon be possible to hear from records almost any work that is worth hearing, as well, it is understood, as many that are not. Many of the British and Continental magazines are opening departments in which new recordings are criticized and the latest developments in the processes of reproduction are discussed. And the European reviews, like the American, are full of advertisements of records and of phonographs which can be bought, as in the United States, by making a small first payment.' THE GENIUS OF KIAZIM BEY O one can tell what strange and unexpected advantages may be derived from the advances of science. An unanticipated application of the latest theories of the physiology of the brain has been brought to our attention. The professors and doctors are generally of the opinion that the activities of the mind are accompanied by slight changes of some sort in the cortex. The cortex, if you are too long out of the class room to remember, is the coating of nerve cells on the outside of the brain among which connections of some sort are established in the process of learning. Activity in the mind, say the experts, is always accompanied by activity in this gray surface of nerve cells. The experts are still worrying about just what that activity may be, but for our present point their indecision need not detain us. Suffice it that the cortex usually has wrinkles and valleys in it; the more indented the surface the greater the area, and thus the more machinery for thought. There seems to be evidence that persons of great mental ability have many wrinkles in the cortex. Now a certain Kiazim Bey, a Turk and a poet, lately wrote some poems that did not please the critics. As is their nature, the critics expressed their disapproval in good set terms, to the great distress of Kiazim Bey. He himself is convinced that the poems are good, that they could, in fact, have been written only by a genius. Being a modest man, however, he did not feel that he could state outright that he actually was a genius. Besides, people might not be willing to take his word for it. So he cast about for a way of proving quite coldly and scientifically a fact that should have been obvious to anyone who troubled to read his verse. He visited a clinic and had X-ray pictures taken of his brain. With the development of the prints came his vindication, for he found that he had a brain of exceptional size covered with a maze of wrinkles and valleys. Such a brain could produce only masterpieces! He shipped the prints off to the critics to confound them, and held his head aloft again. The world, all unknowing, held at least one man who had been proved a genius. THE LAMENT OF WU PEI-FU THOSE who have followed the com plicated political affairs of China for the past few years may remember the name of Wu Pei-fu. He was one of the ablest of the generals who were fighting to put China under some sort of stable rule; his career was meteoric, leading from one victory to another until it began to look as if he would become a dictator strong enough to unify his country. But just at the moment when his hopes seemed the highest, he was deserted by his aid, General Feng Yusiang; his power crumbled like a house of cards and he had to flee for his life. General on a solitary horse in the The uniforms of the guards, once so fair, We who have slept with our swords Do you not recall the famous soldiers Lonely, miserable, and hungry though Yet they gaily sang songs in exile beyond The hills of Shu are far, far from the The spring breezes fan not the branches The hungry eagle, when sated with food, But he does not surpass in height of flight the vulture and the crane. ger, which only gives him his He will yet slay the robbers like a de- And water his horse once more in the But now he returns bathed in sweat Alas, how heroic is the warrior! A MISSIONARY TO CHRISTENDOM He went into hiding somewhere in PA Szechwan and was for a time supposed to have entered a Buddhist monastery, using an assumed name. Although no one seems to know where he is, poems signed by Wu circulate in China from time to time and cause considerable comment because of their melancholy longing for the good old days when he was an almost-dictator, and their veiled intimations that some day he will return. A translation of one of his poems appeared recently in the London Times. It is obviously the work of one with the finest classical Chinese education, a swan song of the militaristic High are the hills of Shu [Szechwan], Thus are the roads of Shu harder than The darkness falls, like benighted way- ARIS recently received a visit from a distinguished guest whose presence passed almost unnoticed. A few papers ran short notes about him and he gave one or two lectures to small audiences, but he had almost no attention from the general public. His Eminence T'ai-hsiu is Abbot of the monastery of NanPou-to at Amoy in China, President of the Buddhist Association for Education, and is in Europe more or less in the character of a missionary. He wears the traditional yellow robe of the Buddhist monk, a hat very much like a cardinal's, except that it is black, and he has the wrinkled face and benign eyes of a Chinaman grown old in the study of ancient wisdom. His manner before his audience is at first strained and diffident, but he soon warms to his task of expounding the Buddha's doctrine of peace and renunciation of desire, and speaks with great animation. J From 'India,' Courtesy B. Westermann & Company THE GREAT HINDOO SHRINE Whither annually flock thousands of pilgrims to catch a glance of their god, Juggernaut, as he is drawn through the streets by a thousand sweating devotees. The Car of Juggernaut India's Great Religious Festival as Seen by a European AGANATH is an earless, legless block of wood, about a yard high, smothered in tinsel and brocade, decked in immense pearls and rubies. Above the glitter, his painted mouth looks suitably cruel. People still sometimes throw themselves under his car when it is harnessed to three thousand pilgrims at his festival at Puri, but not often. When the police are not looking, and where the press of pilgrims is thick, some poor widow may go to her bliss under his sixteen wheels (her relations may even give her a little push toward heaven), but on the whole By F. Yeats-Brown From the Spectator, London Liberal Weekly life is safer than it used to be and the For uncounted centuries Jaganath has day psychologists may be able to explain how the pandars (who have given a verb to our language) influence the crowd; how the priests, elephants, flowers, bugles, and heat combine into a single emotional complex. As for me, I shall only try to take a morning out of my life and put it into a page of print, without analysis. We are at the Lion Gate, then, in the Temple Square of Puri, in a roped-off inclosure containing privileged spectators and the cars of Jaganath, Subhadra, Balarama. The cars are cottages on wheels, several stories high, beflagged and betinseled, with a central room for the god. On the front platform sit gilt idols of the drivers, with elbows and wrists in regular coaching style. Ropes thick as a man's wrist lie coiled below the cars, to each of which will be harnessed a thousand pilgrims. The car of Jaganath has three such traces, the others two. Outside our inclosure where we stand with priests, pundits, retinues of rajahs, police officials, the Temple manager squats the huge concourse of the people of Brahma. Only the pandars remain erect, fanning their flock with fly-whisks, sprinkling it with holy Subhadra arrives on the shoulders of a hundred priests, preceded by another hundred walking backwards. TWO WO hours pass, but Time is an illusion of Siva, destroyer of Forms. The square is packed to suffocation. The sun peeps in and out, raising the temperature to 100° F., and then blanketing us in clouds. Balarama has come, but still the Lord of the World delays. Now at last the backward-moving priests appear for the third time, and with them come elephants like castles on a checkerboard of brown bodies and white clothes, and waving white chowris, and wild braceleted arms. Jaganath has a peacock fan bigger than the Pope's, and his conchs are stranger than the silver trumpets of Saint Peter's. A throng seems to be fighting round him. The sun blazes over pandemonium. The ropes are blazes over pandemonium. The ropes are broken. Hot bodies surge by me and over me to the car of Jaganath. Priests and pandars try to beat them down with rolls of matting, but good-humoredly, for this always happens. The people will not be denied touch with the deity. Through these ecstasies and agonies Jaganath is borne to his seat. With each Jaganath is fertility to the barren, heart'sease to the sad, sons and kine to the householder. Nearby, a temple elephant, with forehead of gold and the red eye of Siva painted on it, stands very thoughtfully. He has seen this show a hundred times. Pilgrims salute him, touching his trappings of cloth of gold and then their foreheads. They give him money, putting annas and even rupees into his trunk, which he swings up lazily to a mahout almost as blasé as himself. Not quite, however, for the mahout has only seen the show fifty times. The crowd is mad with delight. Showers of marigold, jasmine, and money fall on the car. The elephant sways on his soft feet and blinks, not cynically, but with a very wistful wonder. The life of India flows by him, turbid, frenzied, yet wrapped in its own inscrutable mysteries. Why does it grovel before Jaganath, when the rishis rejected idolatry several thousand years ago? The elephant seems to share my feelings. Neither he nor I know how it is that the blind have been made to see by Jaganath, and the dumb to speak. water, explaining to it the proceedings, step taken the peacock plumes come for- DO YOU doubt it? If you have seen for many of the pilgrims are strangers from far places, and ignorant. WHEN the Lord Krishna was medi tating with legs crossed in the lotus ward. Through the tumult one can hear a rhythm, as if the fan kept time to a chant. Jaganath is ready to go where Lakshmi waits. posture here at Puri, they tell their NOW charges, a hunter mistook the upturned sole of his left foot for part of a deer, and shot him. Before dying, Krishna forgave the hunter; then he abandoned his mortal body and it became transformed into Jaganath, Lord of the World, symbol of the godhead. Soon he will emerge from the shrine where he has lived for ages, on his yearly pilgrimage to his consort, Lakshmi, at the Garden Temple four miles away. Already there is a stir at the Lion Gate, for the sister of the Lord of the World is coming. The pandars tell the pilgrims, and the pilgrims lift up their voices. The pandars join hands in worship. The pilgrims join theirs. The pandars sprinkle and fan the squatting hosts and there is a seething and a crying. The voice of the crowd is like the purr of a tremendous tiger. The palanquin of TOW an odd thing happens, which I wish the Simon Commission could see. A British police officer, sweating and disheveled in his khaki, appears before the car. His duty is to see that the god reaches the garden of his desire. It is a ticklish business, for Jaganath is so holy that he cannot be moved backward, even an inch. Should his car take a slant across the square and butt against a house, the house must come down. The Superintendent of Police directs the human horses with a whistle. A thousand men are clustered on each rope. When the Superintendent sounds a blast they take the strain, and the traces stretch and stretch, like pieces of elastic. Slowly, smoothly, the sixteen wheels revolve. Everywhere between them, above, below, on every side, men and women and children are clinging and crying and trampling and fainting. A glimpse of these people of Puri and caught a little of the spirit of that far-off shore, you will know that wonders still walk this earth. Everything is possible here, but comprehension is not easy for those whose nurture has been different, whose climate is kind, whose traditions are concerned with conquest of races or environment. The Indian, like our early saints, is interested, not in machines, but in the souls of men. In his mind germinated bhakti marga, whose light rejoiced all Christendom when it passed through the crystal of Saint Francis. It was an Indian also (Sankara) whose principles of meditation must surely have inspired Loyola. To-day we are further from the ages of faith, but it would be the commonest of vulgar errors to believe that guns and engines have won us a moral as well as material superiority over 'simpler' minds. The two cultures have much to give each other, but to bridge the gap between them will require an imagination that can stretch like the ropes of Jaganath's car. |