Rangitikei Advocate. SECOND EDITION. THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 1907. EDITORIAL NOTES

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 8717, 17 January 1907, Page 2

Rangitikei Advocate. SECOND EDITION. THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 1907. EDITORIAL NOTES

The difference between western and eastern peoples is so great that it is doubtful whether they will ever fully understand one another. It is possible for an Englishman who has lived long on the Continent to comprehend the point of view of Frenchmen or Germans, but even those who have resided long years in the East fail to entirely grasp the mental attitude of the peoples among whom they have lived. One of the most curious divergencies between eastern and western ideas arises from the widely differing views held as to the relations between the body and what, to hide our ignorance, we call the

soul. To the western mind the body is the fitting envelope for the soul. ' It is recognised that the body must be subject to the soul as the higher power, but it is also fully understood that anything which injures or degrades the body must have a corresponding effect on the soul. In a well balanced man the partnership between the lower and higher elements is close and friction between the two partners, though not infrequent, is the exception rather than the rule. Among eastern peoples, however, the case is quite otherwise, and the soul appears to be a tenant ’ which is constantly chaffing at the limits and restrictions imposed by its bodily habitation. The attempt to arrange some modus vivendi between these warring elements has given rise to the great religions of the world, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddism and Confucianism, all of which have had their earliest homes in Asia. As carried into practice in the East all these varied forms of religion lead to asceticism — the attempt to discipline and torture the body so as to render it powerless to fetter the soul in its aspirations. To our ideas the object aimed at by the ascetic is an unattainable one, the union of body and soul being so close that wbat injures one must have an unfavorable effect on both. The early Eastern Christians, however, rejoiced in submitting their bodies to every form of torture. One of them, Simeon Stylites, spent nearly half a century on the summit of a pillar 60 feet high with no shelter from the burning sun. Other monks wandered shelterless and almost naked, grazing on the grass and herbs they found on the hill sides. To-day in India fakirs and jogia undergo unheard of tortures in the name of religion. Some of them keep their hands tight closed until their nails have grown through and out of the flesh of their hands, while others swing suspended from hooks thrust through the flesh of the back. To us the state of mind which leads to these incredible austerities is quite inconceivable, yet in the East popular opinion views them as the natural outcome of the religious temperament. It would almost seem as if the nervous system of the people of the East was in some way different from our own. The readiness of the Chinese to undergo torture, or even submit to death for money payments, and the ease with which wounded Japanese soldiers recovered from the shock of severe operations appear to point in this direction. However this may be, it is clear that the relations between body and mind among Asiatics are totally different from those existing in Western nations. It may be that ours is the higher development, it is certainly the more comfortable one, but the difference establiahea an impassible gulf between Eastern and Western 1 races which it is impossible for even ■ sympathy to bridge. 1