als, whatever interest the Far Eastern people may succeed in
raising now, Nature will in the end make them pay dearly for their lack
of principal.

The Far Eastern civilization resembles, in fact, more a mechanical
mixture of social elements than a well differentiated chemical compound.
For in spite of the great variety of ingredients thrown into its
caldron of destiny, as no affinity existed between them, no combination
resulted. The power to fuse was wanting. 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 exhausted
early. Sleepy, no doubt, from having got up betimes with the dawn, these
dwellers in the far lands of the morning began to look upon their day
as already well 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
influence of the last twenty years, and each man might almost be his
own great-grandfather. In race characteristics 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.

If we take, through the earth's temperate zone, a belt of country
whose northern and southern edges are determined by certain limiting
isotherms, not more than half the width of the zone apart, we shall find
that we have included in a relatively small extent of surface almost
all the nations of note in the world, past or present. Now if we examine
this belt, and compare the different parts of it with one another, we
shall be struck by a remarkable fact. The peoples inhabiting it grow
steadily more personal as we go west. So unmistakable is this gradation
of spirit, that one is tempted to ascribe it to cosmic rather than
to human causes. It is as marked as the change in color of the human
complexion observable along any meridian, which ranges from black at
the equator to blonde toward the pole. In like manner, the sense of
self grows more intense as we follow in 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 th