copied China, and lastly Japan imitated Korea. In this simple manner
they successively became possessed of a civilization which originally
was not the property of any one of them. In the eagerness they all
evinced in purloining what was not theirs, and in the perfect
content with which they then proceeded to enjoy what they had taken,
they remind us forcibly of that happy-go-lucky class in the
community which prefers to live on questionable loans rather than
work itself for a living. Like those same individuals, whatever
interest the Far Eastern people may succeed in raising now, Nature
will in the end make them pay dearly for their lack of principal.

The Far Eastern civilization resembles, in fact, more a mechanical
mixture of social elements than a well differentiated chemical
compound. For in spite of the great variety of ingredients thrown
into its caldron of destiny, as no affinity existed between them, no
combination resulted. The power to fuse was wanting. Capability to
evolve anything is not one of the marked characteristics of the Far
East. Indeed, the tendency to spontaneous variation, Nature's mode
of making experiments, would seem there to have been an enterprising
faculty that was exhausted early. Sleepy, no doubt, from having got
up betimes with the dawn, these dwellers in the far lands of the
morning began to look upon their day as already well spent before
they had reached its noon. They grew old young, and have remained
much the same age ever since. What they were centuries ago, that at
bottom they are to-day. Take away the European influence of the
last twenty years, and each man might almost be his own
great-grandfather. In race characteristics he is yet essentially
the same. The traits that distinguished these peoples in the past
have been gradually extinguishing them ever since. Of these traits,
stagnating influences upon their career, perhaps the most important