偶然看见一本英文小书The Book of Tea，原以为是国人写给洋人看的，作者却是日本人Kakuzo Okakura——冈仓天心（1863-1913），检索他的履历，令我想起咱们的遗老前辈辜鸿铭（比冈仓大6岁），他们都从小受西洋教育，外文比母语还好，都用英文向洋人介绍东方文化，好像还都有“大东亚一体”的思想……

关于茶，辜老有一个绝妙的比喻：男人与女人就像茶壶与茶杯，一个茶壶配几个茶杯是天经地义的事情。小曼嫁给徐志摩时，就告诫小徐不要学老辜。冈仓的茶书，开篇也把茶（还有茶杯）与人联系起来；标题“The Cup of Humanity”，简直就是茶的一个绝妙定义，只有“茶道”中人才能体会的定义。

关于茶（杯），冈仓说，外人不明白我们为什么对茶那么“多事”——作者大概借了莎翁“无事生非”的题目（much ado about nothing）——他们不知道杯子里藏着多少“暴风雨”（又借了莎翁的题目）。但是，人生享乐就那么一小杯，还常常洋溢着泪水，对我们的无限饥渴而言，它是那么容易干涸——想想这些，我们寄托于一杯茶，有什么不对呢？

The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a tea-cup! He will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup.

冈仓对茶的认识，似乎比我们的茶圣更高明：茶的哲学不独在于唯美，还体现了我们的天人观，融会了伦理和宗教。它因洁净而卫生，因简约而节俭；它还是修身养性的方圆规矩，因为它让我们感觉人在宇宙的分量。它代表真正的东方民主的精神，让所有欣赏它的人都成为有品位的贵族。

The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe. It represents the true spirit of Eastern democracy by making all its votaries aristocrats in taste.