ely conforms, and for which he inherits the skill of countless
generations. From the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes, in
whose use he is surprisingly proficient, he is the artist all over.
Admirable, however, as is his manual dexterity, his mental altitude
is still more to be admired; for it is artistic to perfection. His
perception of beauty is as keen as his comprehension of the cosmos is
crude; for while with science he has not even a speaking acquaintance,
with art he is on terms of the most affectionate intimacy.

To the whole Far Eastern world science is a stranger. Such nescience is
patent even in matters seemingly scientific. For although the Chinese
civilization, even in the so-called modern inventions, was already old
while ours lay still in the cradle, it was to no scientific spirit that
its discoveries were due. Notwithstanding the fact that Cathay was the
happy possessor of gunpowder, movable type, and the compass before
such things were dreamt of in Europe, she owed them to no knowledge of
physics, chemistry, or mechanics. It was as arts, not as sciences, they
were invented. And it speaks volumes for her civilization that she burnt
her powder for fireworks, not for firearms. To the West alone belongs
the credit of manufacturing that article for the sake of killing people
instead of merely killing time.

The scientific is not the Far Oriental point of view. To wish to know
the reasons of things, that irrepressible yearning of the Western
spirit, is no characteristic of the Chinaman's mind, nor is it a Tartar
trait. Metaphysics, a species of speculation that has usually proved
peculiarly attractive to mankind, probably from its not requiring any
scientific capital whatever, would seem the most likely place to seek
it. But upon such matters he has expended no imagination of his own,
having quietly taken on trust from India what he now professes. As for
science proper, it has reached at his hands only the quasimorphologic
stage; that is, it consists of catalogues concocted according to the
ingenuity of the individual and resembles the real thing about as much
as a haphazard arrangement of human bones might be expected to resemble
a man. Not only is the spirit of the subject left out altogether,
but the mere outward semblance is misleading. For pseudo-scientific
collections of facts which never rise to be classifications of phenomena
forms to his idea the acme of erudition. His mathematics, for exam