trimming a fact. His interpretation of us, therefore, touches our
sensitiveness in regions--and in a degree--which perhaps his Japanese
students were unconscious of; we too marvel as well as they at his skill
in explaining, but we are sensitive to what he found necessary to explain.
We read less for the explanation than for the inventory of ourselves.

Any interpretation of life which looks closely to the facts will probably
increase our sense of mystery and of strangeness in common things. If on
the other hand it is a theory of experience which chiefly interests us, we
may divert our attention somewhat from the experience to the theory,
leaving the world as humdrum as it was before we explained it. In that
case we must seek the exotic in remote places and in exceptional
conditions, if we are to observe it at all. But Lafcadio Hearn cultivated
in himself and taught his students to cultivate a quick alertness to those
qualities of life to which we are usually dulled by habit. Education as he
conceived of it had for its purpose what Pater says is the end of
philosophy, to rouse the human spirit, to startle it into sharp and eager
observation. It is a sign that dulness is already spreading in us, if we
must go far afield for the stimulating, the wondrous, the miraculous. The
growing sensitiveness of a sound education would help us to distinguish
these qualities of romance in the very heart of our daily life. To have so
distinguished them is in my opinion the felicity of Hearn in these
chapters. When he was writing of Japan for European or American readers,
we caught easily enough the exotic atmosphere of the island
kingdom--easily enough, since it was the essence of a world far removed
from ours. The exotic note is quite as strong in these chapters. We shall
begin to appreciate Hearn's genius when we reflect that here he finds for
us the exotic in ourselves.

The first three chapters deal from different standpoints with the same