aware: the one
the infantile existence that precedes his boyish discovery, the other
the gloom that grows with years,--two twilights that fringe the two
borders of his day. But with the Far Oriental, life is all twilight. For
in Japan and China both states are found together. There, side by side
with the present unconsciousness of the babe exists the belief in a
coming unconsciousness for the man. So inseparably blended are the two
that the known truth of the one seems, for that very bond, to carry
with it the credentials of the other. Can it be that the personal,
progressive West is wrong, and the impersonal, impassive East right?
Surely not. Is the other side of the world in advance of us in
mind-development, even as it precedes us in the time of day; or just as
our noon is its night, may it not be far in our rear? Is not its seeming
wisdom rather the precociousness of what is destined never to go far?

Brought suddenly upon such a civilization, after the blankness of a
long ocean voyage, one is reminded instinctively of the feelings of that
bewildered individual who, after a dinner at which he had eventually
ceased to be himself, was by way of pleasantry left out overnight in a
graveyard, on their way home, by his humorously inclined companions; and
who, on awaking alone, in a still dubious condition, looked around
him in surprise, rubbed his eyes two or three times to no purpose, and
finally muttered in a tone of awe-struck conviction, "Well, either I'm
the first to rise, or I'm a long way behind time!"

Whether their failure to follow the natural course of evolution results
in bringing them in at the death just the same or not, these people are
now, at any rate, stationary not very far from the point at which we
all set out. They are still in that childish state of development
before self-consciousness has spoiled the sweet simplicity of nature. An
impersonal race seems never to have fully grown up.

Partly for its own sake, partly for ours, this most distinctive feature
of the Far East, its marked impersonality, is well worthy particular
attention; for while it collaterally suggests pregnant thoughts about
ourselves, it directly underlies the deeper oddities of a civilization
which is the modern eighth wonder of the world. We shall see this as we
look at what these people are, at what they were, and at what they hope
to become; not historically, but psychologically, as one might perceive,
were he but wise enoug