esent hidden from sight, may sometime come to
us, and the seemingly irreconcilable will then turn out to involve no
contradiction at all. For this much is certain: grand as is the great
conception of Buddhism, majestic as is the idea of the stately rest it
would lead us to, the road here below is not one the life of the world
can follow. If earthly existence be an evil, then Buddhism will help us
ignore it; but if by an impulse we cannot explain we instinctively crave
activity of mind, then the great gospel of Gautama touches us not; for
to abandon self--egoism, that is, not selfishness is the true vacuum
which nature abhors. As for Far Orientals, they themselves furnish proof
against themselves. That impersonality is not man's earthly goal they
unwittingly bear witness; for they are not of those who will survive.
Artistic attractive people that they are, their civilization is like
their own tree flowers, beautiful blossoms destined never to bear fruit;
for whatever we may conceive the far future of another life to be, the
immediate effect of impersonality cannot but be annihilating. If these
people continue in their old course, their earthly career is closed.
Just as surely as morning passes into afternoon, so surely are these
races of the Far East, if unchanged, destined to disappear before the
advancing nations of the West. Vanish they will off the face of the
earth and leave our planet the eventual possession of the dwellers where
the day declines. Unless their newly imported ideas really take root, it
is from this whole world that Japanese and Koreans, as well as Chinese,
will inevitably be excluded. Their Nirvana is already being realized;
already it has wrapped Far Eastern Asia in its winding-sheet, the shroud
of those whose day was but a dawn, as if in prophetic keeping with the
names they gave their homes,--the Land of the Day's Beginning, and the
Land of the Morning Calm.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Soul of the Far East, by Percival Lowell

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUL OF THE FAR EAST ***

***** This file should be named 1409.txt or 1409.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/0/1409/

Produced by Eric Hutton

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these