Mr. Rudyard Kipling has asked in a celebrated epigram what they can
know of England who know England only. It is a far deeper and sharper
question to ask, "What can they know of England who know only the world?"
for the world does not include England any more than it includes
the Church. The moment we care for anything deeply, the world--
that is, all the other miscellaneous interests--becomes our enemy.
Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one's self
"unspotted from the world;" but lovers talk of it just as much
when they talk of the "world well lost." Astronomically speaking,
I understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose
that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers
inhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth--
the truth that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe.
Thus Mr. Kipling does certainly know the world; he is a man of the world,
with all the narrowness that belongs to those imprisoned in that planet.
He knows England as an intelligent English gentleman knows Venice.
He has been to England a great many times; he has stopped there
for long visits. But he does not belong to it, or to any place;
and the proof of it is this, that he thinks of England as a place.
The moment we are rooted in a place, the place vanishes.
We live like a tree with the whole strength of the universe.

The globe-trotter lives in a smaller world than the peasant.
He is always breathing, an air of locality. London is a place, to be
compared to Chicago; Chicago is a place, to be compared to Timbuctoo.
But Timbuctoo is not a place, since there, at least, live men
who regard it as the universe, and breathe, not an air of locality,
but the winds of the world. The man in the saloon steamer has
seen all the races of men, and he is thinking of the things that