cle
of a world that has died of old age. No weak spot in their social
organism destroyed them from within; no epidemic, in the shape of
foreign hordes, fell upon them from without. For in spite of the fact
that China offers the unique example of a country that has simply lived
to be conquered, mentally her masters have invariably become her pupils.
Having ousted her from her throne as ruler, they proceeded to sit at
her feet as disciples. Thus they have rather helped than hindered her
civilization.

Whatever portion of the Far East we examine we find its mental history
to be the same story with variations. However unlike China, Korea, and
Japan are in some respects, through the careers of all three we can
trace the same life-spirit. It is the career of the river Jordan rising
like any other stream from the springs among the mountains only to fall
after a brief existence into the Dead Sea. For their vital force
had spent itself more than a millennium ago. Already, then, their
civilization had in its deeper developments attained its stature, and
has simply been perfecting itself since. We may liken it to some stunted
tree, that, finding itself prevented from growth, bastes the more
luxuriantly to put forth flowers and fruit. For not the final but the
medial processes were skipped. In those superficial amenities with
which we more particularly link our idea of civilization, these peoples
continued to grow. Their refinement, if failing to reach our standard
in certain respects, surpasses ours considering the bare barbaric
basis upon which it rests. For it is as true of the Japanese as of
the proverbial Russian, though in a more scientific sense, that if you
scratch him you will find the ancestral Tartar. But it is no less true
that the descendants of this rude forefather have now taken on a polish
of which their own exquisite lacquer gives but a faint reflection. The
surface was perfected after the substance was formed. Our word finish,
with its double meaning, expresses both the process and the result.

There entered, to heighten the bizarre effect, a spirit common in minds
that lack originality--the spirit of imitation. Though consequent enough
upon a want of initiative, the results of this trait appear anything but
natural to people of a more progressive past. The proverbial collar and
pair of spurs look none the less odd to the stranger for being a mental
instead of a bodily habit. Something akin to such a case of unna