three we can trace the same life-spirit. It is the career of the
river Jordan rising like any other stream from the springs among the
mountains only to fall after a brief existence into the Dead Sea.
For their vital force had spent itself more than a millennium ago.
Already, then, their civilization had in its deeper developments
attained its stature, and has simply been perfecting itself since.
We may liken it to some stunted tree, that, finding itself prevented
from growth, bastes the more luxuriantly to put forth flowers and
fruit. For not the final but the medial processes were skipped.
In those superficial amenities with which we more particularly link
our idea of civilization, these peoples continued to grow. Their
refinement, if failing to reach our standard in certain respects,
surpasses ours considering the bare barbaric basis upon which it
rests. For it is as true of the Japanese as of the proverbial Russian,
though in a more scientific sense, that if you scratch him you will
find the ancestral Tartar. But it is no less true that the descendants
of this rude forefather have now taken on a polish of which their
own exquisite lacquer gives but a faint reflection. The surface was
perfected after the substance was formed. Our word finish, with its
double meaning, expresses both the process and the result.

There entered, to heighten the bizarre effect, a spirit common in
minds that lack originality--the spirit of imitation. Though
consequent enough upon a want of initiative, the results of this trait
appear anything but natural to people of a more progressive past.
The proverbial collar and pair of spurs look none the less odd to
the stranger for being a mental instead of a bodily habit. Something
akin to such a case of unnatural selection has there taken place.
The orderly procedure of natural evolution was disastrously
supplemented by man. For the fact that in the growth of their tree