You are fighting after making up your mind...."Prothero was a little disconcerted by Benham's prompt endorsement of his Chinese identification.He had hoped it would be exasperating.
He tried to barb his offence.He amplified the indictment.All cultures must be judged by their reaction and fatigue products, and Confucianism had produced formalism, priggishness, humbug....No doubt its ideals had had their successes; they had unified China, stamped the idea of universal peace and good manners upon the greatest mass of population in the world, paved the way for much beautiful art and literature and living."But in the end, all your stern orderliness, Benham," said Prothero, "only leads to me.The human spirit rebels against this everlasting armour on the soul.
After Han came T'ang.Have you never read Ling Po? There's scraps of him in English in that little book you have--what is it?--the LUTE OF JADE? He was the inevitable Epicurean; the Omar Khayyam after the Prophet.Life must relax at last....""No!" cried Benham."If it is traditional, I admit, yes; but if it is creative, no...."Under the stimulation of their undying controversy Benham was driven to closer enquiries into Chinese thought.He tried particularly to get to mental grips with English-speaking Chinese."We still know nothing of China," said Prothero."Most of the stuff we have been told about this country is mere middle-class tourists' twaddle.We send merchants from Brixton and missionaries from Glasgow, and what doesn't remind them of these delectable standards seems either funny to them or wicked.I admit the thing is slightly pot-bound, so to speak, in the ancient characters and the ancient traditions, but for all that, they KNOW, they HAVE, what all the rest of the world has still to find and get.When they begin to speak and write in a modern way and handle modern things and break into the soil they have scarcely touched, the rest of the world will find just how much it is behind....Oh! not soldiering; the Chinese are not such fools as that, but LIFE...."Benham was won to a half belief in these assertions.
He came to realize more and more clearly that while India dreams or wrestles weakly in its sleep, while Europe is still hopelessly and foolishly given over to militant monarchies, racial vanities, delirious religious feuds and an altogether imbecile fumbling with loaded guns, China, even more than America, develops steadily into a massive possibility of ordered and aristocratic liberalism....
The two men followed their associated and disconnected paths.
Through Benham's chance speeches and notes, White caught glimpses, as one might catch glimpses through a moving trellis, of that bilateral adventure.He saw Benham in conversation with liberal-minded mandarins, grave-faced, bald-browed persons with disciplined movements, who sat with their hands thrust into their sleeves talking excellent English; while Prothero pursued enquiries of an intenser, more recondite sort with gentlemen of a more confidential type.And, presently, Prothero began to discover and discuss the merits of opium.
For if one is to disavow all pride and priggishness, if one is to find the solution of life's problem in the rational enjoyment of one's sensations, why should one not use opium? It is art materialized.It gives tremendous experiences with a minimum of exertion, and if presently its gifts diminish one need but increase the quantity.Moreover, it quickens the garrulous mind, and steadies the happiness of love.Across the varied adventures of Benham's journey in China fell the shadow first of a suspicion and then of a certainty....
The perfected and ancient vices of China wrapped about Prothero like some tainted but scented robe, and all too late Benham sought to drag him away.And then in a passion of disgust turned from him.
"To this," cried Benham, "one comes! Save for pride and fierceness!""Better this than cruelty," said Prothero talking quickly and clearly because of the evil thing in his veins."You think that you are the only explorer of life, Benham, but while you toil up the mountains I board the house-boat and float down the stream.For you the stars, for me the music and the lanterns.You are the son of a mountaineering don, and I am a Chinese philosopher of the riper school.You force yourself beyond fear of pain, and I force myself beyond fear of consequences.What are we either of us but children groping under the black cloak of our Maker?--who will not blind us with his light.Did he not give us also these lusts, the keen knife and the sweetness, these sensations that are like pineapple smeared with saltpetre, like salted olives from heaven, like being flayed with delight....And did he not give us dreams fantastic beyond any lust whatever? What is the good of talking? Speak to your own kind.I have gone, Benham.I am lost already.There is no resisting any more, since I have drugged away resistance.Why then should I come back? I know now the symphonies of the exalted nerves; I can judge; and I say better lie and hear them to the end than come back again to my old life, to my little tin-whistle solo, my--effort! My EFFORT!...I ruin my body.I know.But what of that?...I shall soon be thin and filthy.What of the grape-skin when one has had the pulp?"
"But," said Benham, "the cleanness of life!""While I perish," said Prothero still more wickedly, "I say good things...."13
White had a vision of a great city with narrow crowded streets, hung with lank banners and gay with vertical vermilion labels, and of a pleasant large low house that stood in a garden on a hillside, a garden set with artificial stones and with beasts and men and lanterns of white porcelain, a garden which overlooked this city.
