Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/179

 Obviously, in this sense, the Oriental has the advantage. The Mohammedan, for instance, who is seeking to-day political and religious emancipation, may cease to go to Mecca on a pilgrimage, may deny the authority of the Khalif of Islam, may become a monogamist and a free-thinker, but he will continue to go to the mosque and though he has to stuff his ears with cotton against the pulpit pulings of a fanatical sheikh. He will continue to believe in Allah the author and the border-guard, so to speak, of human freedom. And should he 'pursue' happiness, instead of walking indifferently in its path, he will do so in his usual manner, that is casually, leisurely, and even circuitously. And should he fail, he has always something higher to pursue. In reverence and awe he will continue to seek the divine, which even in the darkest depths of fatalism, never loses for him its potency and grace. In India the antithesis is more pronounced—the parallel more interesting. The Hindu says, I am a part of the whole,