by side with ours, and
the two pictures combined will yield results beyond what either alone
could possibly have afforded. Thus harmonized, they will help us
to realize humanity. Indeed it is only by such a combination of two
different aspects that we ever perceive substance and distinguish
reality from illusion. What our two eyes make possible for material
objects, the earth's two hemispheres may enable us to do for mental
traits. Only the superficial never changes its expression; the
appearance of the solid varies with the standpoint of the observer.
In dreamland alone does everything seem plain, and there all is
unsubstantial.

To say that the Japanese are not a savage tribe is of course
unnecessary; to repeat the remark, anything but superfluous, on the
principle that what is a matter of common notoriety is very apt to
prove a matter about which uncommonly little is known. At present we
go halfway in recognition of these people by bestowing upon them a
demi-diploma of mental development called semi-civilization, neglecting,
however, to specify in what the fractional qualification consists.
If the suggestion of a second moiety, as of something directly
complementary to them, were not indirectly complimentary to ourselves,
the expression might pass; but, as it is, the self-praise is rather too
obvious to carry conviction. For Japan's claim to culture is not based
solely upon the exports with which she supplements our art, nor upon the
paper, china, and bric-a-brac with which she adorns our rooms; any more
than Western science is adequately represented in Japan by our popular
imports there of kerosene oil, matches, and beer. Only half civilized
the Far East presumably is, but it is so rather in an absolute than a
relative sense; in the sense of what might have been, not of what is. It
is so as compared, not with us, but with the eventual possibilities of
humanity. As yet, neither system, Western nor Eastern, is perfect enough
to serve in all things as standard for the other. The light of truth
has reached each hemisphere through the medium of its own mental
crystallization, and this has polarized it in opposite ways, so that now
the rays that are normal to the eyes of the one only produce darkness
to those of the other. For the Japanese civilization in the sense of not
being savagery is the equal of our own. It is not in the polish that the
real difference lies; it is in the substance polished. In politeness, in
deli