To the Forbidden Land Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet (An Old and Rare Book)

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THE Romance of Exploration and Discovery has done much to break down the artificial barriers which were set up in men's notions between Realism and Romance. The exhilaration, the surprise, the mystery, which ac- company or constitute the romantic effect, were once supposed to be associated with the impossible, the fantastic and the unreal. Yet the normal human mind does not care, and never cared, for romance as romance; and its romantic pleasure must arise from what is firmly believed, at least for the nonce, to be an aspect of Reality. The antique and the exotic, war and warlike adventure, chivalrous love and duty, the supernatural in many shapes, which were once de rigueur assome of the ingredients of Romance, could only move on the strict assumption that they were real and even actual-that they had happened somewhere and somewhen and to somebody, either in this world or in another. Consequently Romance had long to put up the awkward pretence of being the Reality, and Fiction to mask as History.

The truth seems to be that the desire for romance is not essentially other than the desire for knowledge. The distinction cannot be stated by saying, for instance, that the one is an escape from, the other an acceptance of, Reality. For Romance is, if anything, a more insatiable thirst for knowledge-a thirst which is impatient of the drab actualities of our own limited experience, and would fain launch into the unexplored worlds beyond. That is why one speaks of the romantic hopes of youth, and of cities that look romantic by moonlight. That is also why Romance has so long been associated with adventure.