So there you are. We must either rise to a higher consciousness on the ruins of a lower one, of no-consciousness, rather, or go on seeming and simulating, aspiring, perspiring, and suffering, until our turn comes. Death denies no one.
Meanwhile, Khalid’s rhapsodies on his way back to the city, we shall heed and try to echo.
“On the high road of the universal spirit,” he sings, “the world, the whole world before me, thrilling and radiating, chanting of freedom, faith, hope, health and power, and joy. Back to the City, O Khalid—the City where Truth, and Faith, and Honesty, and Wisdom, are ever suffering, ever struggling, ever triumphing. No, it matters not with me if the spirit of intelligence and power, of freedom and culture, which must go the rounds of the earth, is always dominated by the instinct of self-interest. That must be; that is inevitable. But the instinct of self-interest, O my Brother, goes with the flesh; the body-politic dies; nations rise and fall; and the eternal Spirit, the progenitor of all ideals, passes to better or worse hands, still chastening and strengthening itself in the process.
“The Orient and Occident, the male and female of the Spirit, the two great streams in which the body and soul of man are refreshed, invigorated, purified—of both I sing, in both I glory, to both I consecrate my life, for both I shall work and suffer and die. My Brothers, the most highly developed being is neither European nor Oriental; but rather he who partakes of the finer qualities of both the European genius and the Asiatic prophet.
“Give me, ye mighty nations of the West, the material comforts of life; and thou, my East, let me partake of thy spiritual heritage. Give me, America, thy hand; and thou, too, Asia. Thou land of origination, where