The Soul of the Far East | Page 4

catches sight in like manner of

the face of a friend, can keep from smiling at the caricatures which the
mirror's left-for-right reversal makes of the asymmetry of that friend's
features,--caricatures all the more grotesque for being utterly
unsuspected by their innocent original? Perhaps, could we once see
ourselves as others see us, our surprise in the case of foreign peoples
might be less pronounced.
Regarding, then, the Far Oriental as a man, and not simply as a
phenomenon, we discover in his peculiar point of view a new
importance,--the possibility of using it stereoptically. For his
mind-photograph of the world can be placed side 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 delicacy, they have as a
people no peers. Art has been their mistress, though science has never
been their master. Perhaps for this very reason that art, not science, has
been the Muse they courted, the result has been all the more widespread.
For culture there is not the attainment of the few, but the common
property of the people. If the peaks of intellect rise less eminent, the
plateau of general elevation stands higher. But little need be said to
prove the civilization of a land where ordinary tea-house girls are
models of refinement, and common coolies, when not at work, play
chess for pastime.
If Japanese ways look odd at first sight, they but look more odd on
closer acquaintance. In a land where, to allow one's understanding the
freer play of indoor life, one begins, not by taking off his hat, but by
removing his boots, he gets at the very threshold a hint that humanity is
to be approached the wrong end to. When, after thus entering a house,
he tries next to gain admittance to the mind of its occupant, the
suspicion becomes a certainty. He discovers that this people talk, so to
speak, backwards; that before he can hope to comprehend them, or
make himself understood in return, he must learn to present his
thoughts arranged in inverse order from the one in which they naturally
suggest themselves to his mind. His sentences must all be turned inside
out. He finds himself lost in a labyrinth of language. The same seems to
be true of the thoughts it embodies. The further he goes the more
obscure the whole process becomes, until, after long