It seemed

contrary to precedent, advice, against experience too, yet it was the

right, the only way. It threatened, I admit, to destroy the prestige so

long and laboriously established, since it seemed a dangerous yielding

to the natives that must menace the white life everywhere and render

trade in the Colony unsafe. Yet I did not hesitate…. There was bustle

at once within that Bungalow; the orders went forth; I saw the way and

chose it—to the dismay, outspoken, of every white man whose welfare

lay in my official hands.

And the results, I may tell you now without pride, since, as we both

admit, no credit attaches to myself—the results astonished the entire

Colony…. The Chiefs came to me, in due course, bringing fruit and

flowers and presents enough to bury all Headquarters, and with a

reverential obedience that proved the rising scotched to death—because

its subtle psychological causes had been marvellously understood.

Full comprehension, as I mentioned earlier in this narrative, we

cannot expect to have. Its origin, I may believe, lies hid in the

nature of that Beauty which is truth and love—in the source of our

very life, perhaps, which lies hid again with beauty very far away….

But I may say this much at least: that it seemed, my inspired action

had cooperated with the instinctive beliefs of these mysterious

tribes—cooperated with their primitive and ancient sense of Beauty. It

had, inexplicably to myself, fulfilled their sense of right, which my

subordinates would have outraged. I had acted with, instead of against,

them.

More I cannot tell you. You have the “crude instance,” and you have

the method. The instances multiplied, the method became habit. There

grew in me this personal attitude towards an impersonal power I hardly

understood, and this attitude included an emotion —love. With faith

and love I consequently obeyed it. I loved the source of my guidance

and assistance, though I dared attach no name to it. Simple enough the

matter might have been, could I have referred its origin to some

name—to our mother or to you, to my Chief in London, to an impersonal

Foreign Office that has since honoured me with money and a complicated

address upon my envelopes, or even, by a stretch of imagination, to

that semi-abstract portion of my being some men call a Higher Self.

To none of these, however, could I honestly or

dishonestly ascribe it. Yet, as in the case of those congratulatory

telegrams from our mother and yourself, I was aware—and this feeling

never failed with each separate occurrence—aware that somebody, other

than ourselves individually or collectively—was pleased.

V

WHAT I have told you so far concerns a growth chiefly of my inner

life that was almost a new birth. My outer life, of event and action,

was sufficiently described in those monthly letters you had from me

during the ten years, broken by three periods of long-leave at home, I

spent in that sinister and afflicted land. This record, however, deals

principally with the essential facts of my life, the inner; the outer

events and actions are of importance only in so far as they interpret

these, since that which a man feels and thinks alone is real, and

thought and feeling, of course, precede all action.

I have told you of the Thrill, of its genesis and development; and I

chose an obvious and rather banal instance, first of all to make myself

quite clear, and, secondly, because the majority were of so delicate a

nature as to render their description extremely difficult. The point is

that the emotion was, for me, a new one. I may honestly describe it as

a birth.

I must now tell you that it first stirred in me some five years

after I left England, and that during those years I had felt nothing

but what most other men feel out here. Whether its sudden birth was due

to the violent country, or to some process of gradual preparation that

had been going forward in me secretly all that time, I cannot tell. No

proof, at any rate, offered itself of either. It came suddenly. I do

know, however, that from its first occurrence it has strengthened and

developed until it has now become a dominating influence of a

distinctly personal kind.

My character has been affected, perhaps improved. You have mentioned

on several occasions that you noted in my letters a new tenderness, a

new kindness towards my fellow-creatures, less of criticism and more of

sympathy, a new love; the “birth of my poetic sense” you also spoke of

once; and I myself have long been aware of a thousand fresh impulses

towards charity and tolerance that had, hitherto, at any rate, lain

inactive in my being.

I need not flatter myself complacently, yet a change there is, and

it may be an improvement. Whether big or small, however, I am sure of

one tiling: I ascribe it entirely to this sharper and more extended

sensitiveness to Beauty, this new and exquisite receptiveness that has

established itself as a motive-power in my life. I have changed the

poet’s line, using prose of course: There is beauty everywhere and

therefore joy.

And I will explain briefly, too, how it is that this copybook maxim

is now for me a practical reality. For at first, with my growing

perception, I was distressed at what seemed to me the lavish waste, the

reckless, spendthrift beauty, not in nature merely but in human nature,

that passed unrecognized and unacknowledged. The loss seemed so

extravagant. Not only that a million flowers waste their sweetness on

the desert air, but that such prodigal stores of human love and

tenderness remain unemployed, their rich harvest all

ungathered—because, misdirected and misunderstood, they find no

receptacle into which they may discharge.

It has now come to me, though only by & slow and almost

imperceptible advance, that these stores of apparently unremunerative

beauty, this harvest so thickly sown about the world, unused,

ungathered—prepare yourself, please, for an imaginative leap—ore

used, are gathered, are employed.