Probably, as Schopenhauer said, the vision of mountains has the effect of producing sadness, because the sense of their antiquity awakens sudden recognition of the shortness of human life. But I do not think it is a mere individual feeling. It is a feeling we share with countless dead who live in us, and who saw the same mountains,--perhaps felt the same way. Besides, there should be a religious ancestral feeling there--since mountains have ever been the abode of gods, and the earliest places of worship and of burial. And I think there is. You do not laugh when you look at mountains--nor when you look at the sea.
What effect does the sudden sight of an extraordinarily beautiful person have upon you? I mean the very _first_. Is it not an effect of sadness? Analyze it; and perhaps you will find yourself involuntarily thinking of _death_.
What has the effect of any great beauty--of art, or poetry or utterance--no matter what the subject? Is it cheerful? No, it is very sad. But why? Perhaps partly because of the consciousness of the _exceptional_ character of that beauty,--therefore the sudden contrast between the tender dream-world of art and goodness, and the hideous goblin realities of the world we know. At all events the sadness is certainly the ancient sadness,--the sadness of life, which must, for reasons we cannot learn, begin and end with an agony.
Now at the Exposition you had all the elements for what Clifford would call a "cosmic emotion" of sadness. Vastness, which forced the knowledge of individual weakness; beauty, compelling the memory of impermanency; force, suggesting weakness also; and prodigious effort,--calling for the largest possible exertion of human sympathy, and love, and pity, and sorrow. That you should feel like crying then, does you honour: that is the tribute of all that is noblest in you to the eternal Religion of Human Suffering.
Dear H., I have not slept last night: I am going to rest a little;--good-bye for a short time, with love to you.
DEAR NISHIDA,--A few days ago there came from Kizuki a little box addressed to me,--from Mr. Senke; and opening it, I found therein the robe of a _Kokuz[=o]_--all black silk with the sacred _mon_ of the temple worked into the silk. Accompanying the robe were two poems, very beautifully written upon vari-coloured paper. The robe was very curious in itself, and of course most precious as a souvenir. I hesitated to write at once; for I could not answer Mr. Senke's magnificent letter in a worthy way at all. It was a very long letter, written on fine paper and in large handsome characters. I have now tried to reply, but my answer reads very shabbily compared with Mr. Senke's gracious style.