Northern tribune. [volume] (Cheboygan, Mich.) 1875-1885, 1883-09-22
Plague and PAn,c.

sceis the East is in part compensated by
the und gniiied dismay and confusion
with which anything like general
notice to quit is received among the
Western races among whom the art of
living has been so ,!fectually studied.
Mr. Kinglake described. with even
more than ord. mary veracity, between
forty and fifty years ago, in his SEQ
then, the contrast between the conduct
OF the Levantines at Cairo, palld with
terror and shrinking from the touch OF
every fluttering garment or rag in the
city, as If it were sentence of death
and as if, too, but for the plague, men
would be immortal land the conduct of
the Mohammedans, who calmly pitched
their tents for the celebration of their
religious festival. and hung swings for
their children in the very burial ground
where the bowls of the arriving funer-
ais were heard hour after hour, pro-
claiming the rapid depopulation of the
great city.
The Oriental, whatever his faith does
not seem to consider prolonged life as
the only conceivable and Ineligible
contingency for himself, outside which
all is unmeaning and chaotic-contin-
gencies not even to be approached with
dignity and presence of mind. On the
contrary he seems to regard life and
death as alike contingencies which he
is bound to meet with the same equa-
nimity-alternative branches of the
same inscrutable DEGREES. But the av-
erage European can only die with Dig
nifty where the steady pressure of opiu-
ion and expectation in the class in
which he lives supplies stimulus THAI
enables him to do so; and if that press
ure is removed by the contagion of a
general panic, such as is caused by the
route of an army or by a frightful cpl
demic, all restraints vanish at once, and
the result is general Generalization and
bewilderment, of which fight appears
to be the only fixed idea.
Mr.. Kingiake contrasts with this un-
dignifed flight, the grave demeanor of
the Mohammedans. 81 did not hear
while was at Cairo that any prayer for
a remission of the plague had been
offered up in the mosques. l believe
that however frightful the ravages of
the disease may be, the Mohammedans
refrain from approaching Heaven with
their complaints until the plague has
endured for a long space. Then st last
they pray God, not that the plague may
cease, but that it may go to another
city!"
We do not know how far this may
apply to the attitude of Mohammedans
OF the present day, but nothing could
express better the belief that the plague
is sent to answer some specific purpose
of course, a purpose of destruction
but that that purpose will in all proba-
bility stop short of the complete de-
struction of given city, and is likely
rather to involve the partial depopula-
ton of other cities. According to Mr.
Kinglake, the deaths in Cairo had
reached 200 day before he left, and
even that was not a point at which it
was thought decent by Mohammedans
to assume that the purpose of God in
sending the plague had been Sufficiently
filed to make it right to pray that it
might pass on to a new place.
Thus, the average Oriental evidently
faces boldly the possibility that it may
be the purpose of God that he and q
great number of his companions should
die, while the average European averts
his mind altogether from such posi-
bility as purely unnatural, and bolts
from the danger which he perceives, so
soon as he understands its fatal charac-
ter, Just as, without discipline, he
would bolt out of the line of fire of a
mitrailleuse, the moment he saw his
comrades falling thickly around him.
And those words 'without discipline"
tell the whole secret of the average Eu-
ropean's strength and weakness. A
disciplined force would be kept in its
place by the respect paid to the opinion
of those who had been trained to value
courage and fidelity to the orders more
highly than life itself. An undisci-
plined crowd flies, because there is no
such respect for trained opinion, no
knowledge that there is such body of
opinion worth respecting, and, finally
because there is no restraining instinct
in the individual strong enough to
take the place of that social discipline
which governs trained body of men.
The Oriental does not fly because
there is not such restraining instinct
an instinct consisting in part, perhaps,
of the feeling that life is hardly worth
so ignominious retreat from death;
partly, again, of the feeling that life
can not ultimately be so rescued, but
will be shortly forfeited again, under
circumstances of still greater ignominy,
even if for the moment death be de-
layed. In other words, the value of
life is less vehement and potent in the
Oriental while the belief in discerni-
BILE destiny is stronger; the value of life
is overwhelmingly predominant in the
European, while the belief in destiny
that in any sense overrates human ac-
ton is more theoretic than practical.
The Oriental is less terrified at the pros