t volume, differ though I do from his main thesis. We begin
this study with a few quotations from Mr. Lowell's now classic work.

"Capability to evolve anything is not one of the marked
characteristics of the Far East. Indeed, the tendency to spontaneous
variation, Nature's mode of making experiments, would seem there to
have been an enterprising faculty that was early exhausted. Sleepy, no
doubt, from having got up betimes with the dawn, these inhabitants of
the land of the morning began to look upon their day as already far
spent before they had reached its noon. They grew old young, and have
remained much the same age ever since. What they were centuries ago,
that at bottom they are to-day. Take away the European influences of
the past twenty years, and each man might almost be his own
great-grandfather. In race character, he is yet essentially the same.
The traits that distinguished these peoples in the past have been
gradually extinguishing them ever since. Of these traits, stagnating
influences upon their career, perhaps the most important is the great
quality of "impersonality."[CGa] "The peoples inhabiting it [the
northern hemisphere] grow steadily more personal as we go West. So
unmistakable is this gradation that we are almost tempted to ascribe
it to cosmical rather than to human causes.... The sense of self grows
more intense as we follow the wake of the setting sun, and fades
steadily as we advance into the dawn. America, Europe, the Levant,
India, Japan, each is less personal than the one before. We stand at
the nearer end of the scale, the Far Orientals at the other. If with
us the 'I' seems to be the very essence of the soul, then the soul of
the Far East may be said to be 'Impersonality.'"[CH]

Following the argument through the volume we see that individual
physical force and aggressiveness, deficiency of politeness, and
selfishness are, according to this line of thought, essential elements
of personality. The opposite set of qualities constitutes the essence
of impersonality. "The average Far Oriental, indeed, talks as much to
no purpose as his Western cousin, only in his chit-chat politeness
takes the place of personalities. With him, self is suppressed, and an
ever-present regard for others is substituted in its stead. A lack of
personality is, as we have seen, the occasion of this courtesy; it is
also its cause.... Considered a priori, the connection between the two
is not far to seek. Impersonali