THE CURIOSITY OF THE OCCIDENTAL
ous method. That is why, I suppose, so much more is accomplished in a given time by the people of the western world.
The tendency in one case is to overtax the imagination, in the other, to overtax the mind. The Oriental, it might be said, grows by repression, the Occidental, by expression. But both methods, to be sure, do not exclude the possibility of a morbid growth. On the contrary, they stimulate it.
The Oriental's curiosity about nature, for instance, is transformed into superlatives of admiration. He approaches it ecstatically, poetically and revels in its external beauty and loveliness. The Occidental approaches it designedly, scientifically and tries to get at the secret of its power to transform it into material well-being. The difference is not only in the point of view, but in the procedure as well.
The reaction is not always startling, nor always agreeable. A Persian and a Parisian were dining one day with a French woman in a Paris restaurant. She was of a reticent beauty, affecting the mysterious.
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