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.

    46/364 page 26
    discriminating observer, £mile Hovelaque, whom I have already quoted,1 “ manifested in the smallest utensil, the humblest stalls, the notices on the shops, the handwriting, the rhythm of movement, always regular and measured, as though to the tune of unheard music, announces a civilisation which is complete in itself, elaborated in the smallest detail, penetrated by one spirit, which no inter¬ ruption ever breaks, a harmony which becomes at length a hallucinatory and overwhelming obsession/’ Or, as another writer has summed up the Chinese attitude : “ For them the art of life is one, as this world and the other are one. Their aim is to make the kingdom of Heaven here and now.” It is obvious that a natural temperament in which the art impulse is so all-embracing, and the aesthetic sensibility so acute, might well have been of a perilous instability. We could scarcely have been surprised if, like that sur¬ passing episode in Egyptian history of which Akhnaten was the leader and Tell-el-Amama the tomb, it had only en¬ dured for a moment. Yet Chinese civilisation, which has throughout shown the dominating power of this sensitive temperament, has lasted longer than any other. The reason is that the very excesses of their temperament forced the Chinese to fortify themselves against its perils. The Great Wall, built more than two thousand years ago and still to-day almost the most impressive work of man on the earth, is typical of this attitude of the Chinese. They have exercised a stupendous energy in fortifying themselves against the natural enemies of their own 1 Hovelaque, La Chine, Paris, 1920, p. 47.
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