Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/212

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weight for pickles. Oh what a lot of the beloved deity!

I once read in an old Chinese book that there was in ancient time a poet who prophesied war when he heard a voice of the cuckoo at a certain bridge at midnight. Who, I like to know, can foretell the future of Western art by the voice of an English thrush?

I overheard the other day some young man exclaim: “Friend, you reason too much!” That remark made me think for a while, and then I exclaimed to myself: “Why! Have Japanese come already to reason too much?” Only forty years ago we were said to be barbarous; and now we are too uncomfortable under the burden of knowledge. Growing, whether wiser or foolish, is certainly degeneration: if we could stay too barbarous as in old time! We have lost a personality after all.

It is not a question how to take you; the most important question is how to arrive at the

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