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