The atmosphere of the West is different, and
fatalism, adopted by its more practical mind, is sheer suicide.
Not that there is much likelihood of a nation with the history and the
literature of England behind it, ever becoming to any great extent
materialistic in the crude sense of Omar's poetry. The danger is
subtler. The motto, "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die," is
capable of spiritualisation, and if you spiritualise that motto it
becomes poisonous indeed. For there are various ways of eating and
drinking, and many who would not be tempted with the grosser appetites
may become pagans by devoting themselves to a rarer banquet, the feast
of reason and the flow of soul. It is possible in that way also to take
the present moment for Eternity, to live and think without horizons. Mr.
Peyton has said, "You see in some little house a picture of a cottage on
a moor, and you wonder why these people, living, perhaps, in the heart
of a great city, and in the most commonplace of houses, put such a
picture there. The reason for it is, that that cottage is for them the
signal of the immortal life of men, and the moor has infinite horizons.
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