t.

Romanticist though he was, Hearn constantly sought the romance in the
highway of life, the aspects of experience which seem to perpetuate
themselves from age to age, compelling literature to reassert them under
whatever changes of form. To one who has followed the large mass of his
lectures it is not surprising that he emphasized those ethical positions
which are likely to remain constant, in spite of much new philosophy, nor
that he constantly recurred to such books as Cory's "Ionica," or Lang's
translation of Theocritus, in which he found statements of enduring human
attitudes. To him the Greek mind made a double appeal. Not only did it
represent to him the best that has yet been thought or said in the world,
but by its fineness and its maturity it seemed kindred to the spirit he
found in ancient Japan. Lecturing to Japanese students on Greek poetry as
it filters through English paraphrases and translations, he must have felt
sometimes as we now feel in reading his lectures, that in his teaching the
long migration of the world's culture was approaching the end of the
circuit, and that the earliest apparition of the East known to most of us
was once more arriving at its starting place, mystery returning to
mystery, and its path at all points mysterious if we rightly observe the
miracle of the human spirit.

BOOKS AND HABITS

CHAPTER I

THE INSUPERABLE DIFFICULTY

I wish to speak of the greatest difficulty with which the Japanese
students of English literature, or of almost any Western literature, have
to contend. I do not think that it ever has been properly spoken about. A
foreign teacher might well hesitate to speak about, it--because, if he
should try to explain it merely from the Western point of view, he could
not hope to be understood; and if he should try to speak about it from the
Japanese point of view, he would be certain to make various mistakes and
to utter various extravagances. The proper explanation might be given by a
Japanese professor only, who should have so intimate an acquaintance with
Western life as to sympathize with it. Yet I fear that it would be
difficult to find such a Japanese professor for this reason, that just in
proportion as he should find himself in sympathy with Western life, in
that proportion he would become less and less able to communicate that
sympathy to his students. The difficulties are so great that it has taken
me many years even to partly guess how