Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/173

 is to rob its people of the principal source of all their treasures. And also of their finer qualities, their patience, ease and contentment as well as their soft and gentle manners. For even a thick layer of traditions, which may be productive, among better things, of tropic indolence and fatality, is better than no tradition at all. And as between a modern Oriental who has lost his astractive qualities, his native virtues, who has relinquished the purer spiritual heritage of his race and an Oriental of the old type, however steeped in superstition and religious cant, I, for one, prefer the latter.

But both will find new inspiration and power, if they turn, not to the gods of materialism, not to the masters of the Machine, but to the torch-bearers of intellectual and spiritual progress lighted by the higher mind and fed by the purer spirit of Europe and America. This is the noble tradition, which, in every social and political upheaval, should be preserved and upheld. It is a tradition that never becomes effete; and though only a few uphold it in