"Yes, I am equally devoted both to the material and the spiritual. And when the two in me are opposed to each other, conflicting, inimical, obdurate, my attitude towards them is neither that of my friend the Hermit nor that of my European superman. I sit down, shut my eyes, compose myself, and concentrate my mind on the mobility of things. If the clouds are moving, why, I have but to sit down and let them move away. I let my No-will, in this case, dominate my will, and that serves my purpose well. To be sure, every question tormenting us would resolve itself favourably, or at least indifferently, if we did not always rush in, wildly, madly, and arrogate to ourselves such claims of authority and knowledge as would make Olympus shake with laughter. The resignation and passiveness of the spirit should always alternate equitably with the terrible strivings of the will. For the dervish who whirls himself into a foaming ecstasy of devotion and the strenuous American who works himself up to a sweating ecstasy of gain, are the two poles of the same absurdity, the two ends of one evil. Indeed, to my way of thinking, the man on the Stock Exchange and the demagogue on the stump, for instance, are brothers to the blatant corybant." CHAPTER III THE SELF ECSTATIC To graft the strenuosity of Europe and America upon the ease of the Orient, the materialism of the West upon the spirituality of the East,--this to us seems to be the principal aim of Khalid. But often in his wanderings and divagations of thought does he give us fresh proof of the truism that no two opposing elements meet and fuse without both losing their original identity. You may place the bit of contentment in the mouth of ambition, so to speak, and jog along in your sterile course between the vast wheat fields groaning under the thousand-toothed plough and the gardens of delight swooning with devotion and sensuality. But cross ambition with contentment and you get the hinny of indifference or the monster of fatalism. We do not say that indifference at certain passes of life, and certain stages, is not healthy, and fatalism not powerful; but both we believe are factors as potent in commerce and trade as pertinacity and calculation. "But is there not room in the garden of delight for a wheat field?" asks Khalid. "Can we not apply the bow to the telegraph wires of the world and make them the vehicle of music as of stock quotations? Can we not simplify life as we are simplifying the machinery of industry? Can we not consecrate its Temple to the Trinity of Devotion, Art, and Work, or Religion, Romance, and Trade?"