Shorter even than his short threescore years and ten is that soul's
life of which man is directly cognizant. Bounded by two seemingly
impersonal states is the personal consciousness of which he is made
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!"