paratory work has never been done, and without that work no man, though he be a Titan, can improvise the results.
When once we have finished sampling and can really proceed to assimilate the four or five civilizations of the unknown East, there will ensue profound changes in our ideas about the world and about life, and in the range of our imagination and sensibility.
Just one type of oriental culture, the Hebraic, is really known to the Western world. That culture, in its religious forms, and particularly in its Christian form, was assimilated by Europe in the days of the Roman Empire. And our moral life still centers about a collection of Palestinian writings.
But as yet we have hardly glanced at the other oriental cultures. We stand only in the vestibule. The immense storehouses of Asiatic nurture are scarcely opened. All we have done is to taste a few sips, a few morsels.
Just as in the two centuries that preceded our own Renaissance there were teachers and poets who found the Greeks and Romans for themselves without waiting for the humanists, so for the last two centuries there has been in Europe a considerable importation of oriental thought and art. Translations, contributions, studies, histories. Here and there the light has shone through. Some marvels have become almost fa-
