s to this species or to that is most true
when the type which receives it is the healthiest and the most normal of
its own kind. The truth as it is to men is most true when the men who
receive it are the healthiest and the most normal of men. We in Europe
are the healthiest and most normal of our kind. It is to us that the
world must look for its headship; we have the harbours, the continual
presence of the sea through all our polities; we have that high
differentiation between the various parts of our unity which makes the
whole of Europe so marvellous an organism; we alone change without
suffering decay. To the truth as Europe accepts it I cannot but bow
down; for if that is not the truth, then the truth is not to be found
upon earth. But there conies upon us perpetually that "wind of Africa";
and it disturbs us. As I lay that day, a year ago, upon the crest of the
mountain, my whole mind was possessed with the influence of such a gale.

Day after day, after day, the silent men of the Desert go forward across
its monotonous horizons; their mouths are flanked with those two deep
lines of patience and of sorrow which you may note to-day in all the
ghettoes of Europe; their smile, when they smile, is restrained by a
sort of ironic strength in the muscles of the face. Their eyes are more
bright than should be eyes of happy men; they are, as it were, inured to
sterility; there is nothing in them of that repose which we Westerners
acquire from a continual contemplation of deep pastures and of
innumerable leaves; they are at war, not only among themselves, but
against the good earth; in a silent and powerful way they are also
_afraid_.

You may note that their morals are an angry series of unexplained
commands, and that their worship does not include that fringe of
half-reasonable, wholly pleasant things which the true worship of a true
God must surely contain. All is as clear-cut as their rocks, and as
unfruitful as their dry valleys, and as dreadful as their brazen sky;
"thou shalt not" this, that, and the other. Their God is jealous; he is
vengeful; he is (awfully present and real to them!) a vision of that
demon of which we in our happier countries make a quaint legend. He
catches men out and trips them up; he has but little relation to the
Father of Christian men, who made the downs of South England and the
high clouds above them.

The good uses of the world are forgotten in the Desert, or fiercely
denied. Love is im