tenderness of the Buddhist towards the lower creation is not due to
sentimentalism, nor is it necessarily a sign of sensitiveness of feeling.
In his profoundly interesting study of the Burmese people Mr. Fielding
Hall has summed up admirably the teaching of Buddha: "Be in love with all
things, not only with your fellows, but with the whole world, with every
creature that walks the earth, with the birds in the air, with the
insects in the grass. All life is akin to man." The oneness of life is
realized by the Eastern as it seldom is by the Western. The love that
stirs in your heart kindled the flower into beauty, and broods in the
great silent pools of the forest.

But Nature is not always kind. That he cannot help feeling. She
inspires fear as well as love. She scatters peace and consolation, but
can scatter also pain and death. All forms of life are more or less
sacred. The creatures of the forest whose ferocity and cunning are
manifest, may they not be inhabited by some human spirit that has misused
his opportunities in life? Thus they have an affinity with us, and are
signs of what we may become.

And if a measure of sacredness attaches to all life, however unfriendly
and harmful it may seem, the gentler forms of life are especially to be
objects of reverence and affection.

In one particular, however, Thoreau's attitude towards the earth and all
that therein is differed from the Buddhist, inasmuch as the fear that
enters into the Eastern's Earth-worship was entirely purged from his
mind. Mr. Page has instituted a suggestive comparison between Thoreau
and St. Francis d'Assisi. Certainly the rare magnetic attraction which
Thoreau seemed to have exercised over his "brute friends" was quite as
remarkable as the power attributed to St. Francis, and it is true to say
that in both cases the sympathy for animals is constantly justified by a
reference to a dim but real brotherhood. The brutes are "undeveloped
men"; they await their transformation and stand on their defence; and it
is very easy to see that inseparably bound up with this view there are
certain elements of mysticism common to the early saint and the American
"hut builder." {106}

And yet, perhaps, Mr. Page presses the analogy between the medieval saint
and the American "poet-naturalist" too far. St. Francis had an ardent,
passionate nature, and whether leading a life of dissipation or tending
to the poor, there is about him a royal impulsiveness