The dance of life / Havelock Ellis.

  • Havelock Ellis
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The dance of life / Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to add that to philosophy, a higher and more refined form of play, the Chinese are peculiarly addicted, and philo¬ sophic discussion is naturally woven in with an “ art of exquisite enjoyment, carried probably to greater per¬ fection than anywhere else in the wTorld. Bertrand Rus¬ sell, who makes this remark, in the suggestive comments on his own visit to China, observes how this “ simple, child¬ like, yet profound attitude towards life results in a libera¬ tion of the impulses to play and enjoyment which makes Chinese life unbelievably restful and delightful after the solemn cruelties of the West. We are reminded of Gourmont’s remark < that pleasure is a human creation, a delicate art, for which, as for music or poetry, only a few are apt. The social polity which brings together the people who thus view life is at once singular and appropriate. I well remember when in youth a new volume of the Sacred Books of the East Series, a part of the Confucian Li-kf, came into my hands, how delighted I was to learn that in China life was regulated by music and ceremony. That was the beginning of an interest in China that has not ceased to grow, though now, when it has become a sort of fashion to exalt the spiritual qualities of the Chinese above those of other peoples, one may well feel disinclined to admit any interest in China. But the conception itself, since it seems to have had its beginning at least a thousand years before Christ, may properly be considered independently of our Western fashions. It is Propriety —the whole ceremony of life—in which all harmonious intercourse subsists; it is the channel by which we
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