The other day you told me of some queer changes in your inner life wrought by the influences of the outer. In my case the changes are very unpleasant. I can't feel towards men generally any longer as I used to--I feel, in short, a little misanthropic. The general facts seem to be that all realities of relations between men are of self-interest in the main; that the pleasures of those relations are illusions--dependent upon youth, power, position, etc., for degree of intensity. No man, as a general rule, shows his soul to another man; he shows it only to a woman,--and then only with the assurance that she won't give him away. As a matter of fact, she can't:--the Holy Ghost takes care of that! No woman unveils herself to another woman--only to a man; and what she unveils he cannot betray. He can only talk of her body, if he is brute enough to wish to: the inner being, of which he has had some glimpses, can be pictured only in a language which he cannot use. But what a fighting masked-ball the whole thing is!
Have you read Huxley's views on Ethics and Evolution? They have been a great revelation to me. They make it perfectly plain why men cannot be good to one another on general principles without causing trouble in the order of the universe. They also explain the immorality of Nature. Cosmic principles afford explanations of--but not consolations for--individual experiences.
DEAR HENDRICK,--Of course I shall teach the "Jungle Book" to the little fellow, when he gets big enough. How pretty of you to send it. I sent some little prints--don't know if you like them; in an album they would perhaps interest your friends who have not been in Japan. I shall look out for seeds for you regularly hereafter.
About Emerson. Last spring I got a pretty edition of him from H. M. & Co. and I digested him. He is only suggestive, but wondrously so at times, as in his poems. As a suggester he will always be great. The talk about his truisms must depend upon the knowledge of the speaker. Emerson will be large or small,--commonplace or profound,--according to the reader's knowledge of the thought of the age.
My reading out here has been pretty heavy. I have had to digest a good deal of Buddhist and Chinese stuff, of course. My philosophical favourites are still Spencer and Huxley, Lewes and Fiske and Clifford. I made Kipling's acquaintance out here (I mean his books), and told you what I think of him. Next to Kipling I like Stevenson. But I have really read very little of anything new. Browning is a pet study still. Somehow I have tired of Tennyson--don't exactly know why.