the Orient, if it is not due to the
inheritance of a common psychic nature, to what is it due? Surely to
the possession of a common civilization and social order. It would be
hard to prove that Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Siamese, Burmese,
Hindus (and how many distinct races does the ethnologist find in
India), Persians, and Turks are all descendants from a common ancestry
and are possessed therefore by physical heredity of a common racial
psychic nature. Yet such is the requirement of the theory we are
opposing. That the races inhabiting the Asiatic continent have had
from ancient times mutual social intercourse, whereby the
civilization, mental, moral, and spiritual, of the most developed has
passed to the other nations, so that China has dominated Eastern Asia,
and India has profoundly influenced all the races inhabiting Asia, is
an indisputable fact. The psychic unity of the Orient is a
civilizational, a social unity, as is also the psychic unity of the
Occident. The reason why the Occident is so distinct from the Orient
in social, in psychic, and in civilizational characteristics is
because these two great branches of the human race have undergone
isolated evolution. Isolated biological evolution has produced the
diverse races. These are now fixed physical types, which can be
modified only by intermarriage. But although isolated social evolution
has produced diverse social and psychic characteristics these are not
fixed and unalterable. To transform psychic and social
characteristics, intimate social intercourse, under special
conditions, is needful alone.

If the characteristics differentiating the Eastern from the Western
peoples are only social, it might be supposed that the results of
association would be mutual, the East influencing the West as much as
the West influences the East, both at last finding a common level.
Such a result, however, is impossible, from the laws regulating
psychic and social intercourse. The less developed psychic nature can
have no appreciable effect on the more highly developed, just as
undeveloped art cannot influence highly developed art, nor crude
science and philosophy highly developed science and philosophy. The
law governing the relations of diverse civilizations when brought into
contact is not like the law of hydrostatics, whereby two bodies of
water of different levels, brought into free communication, finally
find a common level, determined by the difference in level and