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 groping about for some means of orienting himself,
he lights at last upon the clue. This clue consists in "the survival
of the unfittest."

In the civilization of Japan we have presented to us a most
interesting case of partially arrested development; or, to speak
esoterically, we find ourselves placed face to face with a singular
example of a completed race-life. For though from our standpoint the
evolution of these people seems suddenly to have come to an end in
mid-career, looked at more intimately it shows all the signs of
having fully run its course. Development ceased, not because of
outward obstruction, but from purely intrinsic inability to go on.
The intellectual machine was not shattered; it simply ran down.
To this fact the phenomenon owes its peculiar interest. For we
behold here in the case of man the same spectacle that we see
cosmically in the case of the moon, the spectacle of a world that
has died of old age. No weak spot in their social organism
destroyed them from within; no epidemic, in the shape of foreign
hordes, fell upon them from without. For in spite of the fact that
China offers the unique example of a country that has simply lived
to be conquered, mentally her masters have invariably become her
pupils. Having ousted her from her throne as ruler, they proceeded
to sit at her feet as disciples. Thus they have rather helped than
hindered her civilization.

Whatever portion of the Far East we examine we find its mental
history to be the same story with variations. However unlike China,
Korea, and Japan are in some respects, through the careers of all