[Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn by Lafcadio Hearn]@TWC D-Link bookBooks and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn INTRODUCTION 12/12
To one who has followed the large mass of his lectures it is not surprising that he emphasized those ethical positions which are likely to remain constant, in spite of much new philosophy, nor that he constantly recurred to such books as Cory's "Ionica," or Lang's translation of Theocritus, in which he found statements of enduring human attitudes.
To him the Greek mind made a double appeal.
Not only did it represent to him the best that has yet been thought or said in the world, but by its fineness and its maturity it seemed kindred to the spirit he found in ancient Japan.
Lecturing to Japanese students on Greek poetry as it filters through English paraphrases and translations, he must have felt sometimes as we now feel in reading his lectures, that in his teaching the long migration of the world's culture was approaching the end of the circuit, and that the earliest apparition of the East known to most of us was once more arriving at its starting place, mystery returning to mystery, and its path at all points mysterious if we rightly observe the miracle of the human spirit..
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