r our
race; for in the time when so much was written on subjects which no one
could determine, people seemed to live in a perpetual state of quarrel
and contention. So, too, a vast part of our ancient literature consists
of historical records of wars an revolutions during the times when the
Ana lived in large and turbulent societies, each seeking aggrandisement
at the expense of the other. You see our serene mode of life now; such
it has been for ages. We have no events to chronicle. What more of us
can be said than that, 'they were born, they were happy, they died?'
Coming next to that part of literature which is more under the control
of the imagination, such as what we call Glaubsila, or colloquially
'Glaubs,' and you call poetry, the reasons for its decline amongst us
are abundantly obvious.

"We find, by referring to the great masterpieces in that department
of literature which we all still read with pleasure, but of which none
would tolerate imitations, that they consist in the portraiture of
passions which we no longer experience--ambition, vengeance, unhallowed
love, the thirst for warlike renown, and suchlike. The old poets lived
in an atmosphere impregnated with these passions, and felt vividly what
they expressed glowingly. No one can express such passions now, for no
one can feel them, or meet with any sympathy in his readers if he did.
Again, the old poetry has a main element in its dissection of those
complex mysteries of human character which conduce to abnormal vices and
crimes, or lead to signal and extraordinary virtues. But our society,
having got rid of temptations to any prominent vices and crimes, has
necessarily rendered the moral average so equal, that there are no
very salient virtues. Without its ancient food of strong passions, vast
crimes, heroic excellences, poetry therefore is, if not actually starved
to death, reduced to a very meagre diet. There is still the poetry of
description--description of rocks, and trees, and waters, and common
household life; and our young Gy-ei weave much of this insipid kind of
composition into their love verses."

"Such poetry," said I, "might surely be made very charming; and we have
critics amongst us who consider it a higher kind than that which depicts
the crimes, or analyses the passions, of man. At all events, poetry of
the inspired kind you mention is a poetry that nowadays commands more
readers than any other among the people I have left above ground.