cases full latitude has been accorded by this nation of thorough-going latitudinarians to the alien religious and philosophical ideas.
Having absorbed all the manifestly useful elements of our culture, Young Japan’s eager wish is to communicate them to her neighbours. To act as broker between West and East is her self-imposed mission. We cannot help thinking that Japan's precept and example will more rapidly leaven the Chinese lump with the leaven of Europeanism than Europe has been able to do in her own person,—and this for the simple reason that though Japan and her continental neighbours heartily despise each other, as the manner of neighbours is, they nevertheless understand each other in a way in which we can never hope to understand any of them. Europe's illusions about the Far East are truly crude. Who would dream of coupling together New-Englanders and Patagonians, simply because arbitrary custom has affixed the single name of "America" to the two widely separated regions which these two peoples inhabit? Yet persons not otherwise undiscerning continue to class, not only the Chinese, but even the Japanese, with Arabs and Persians, on the ground that all are equally "Orientals," "Asiatics," though they dwell thousands of miles apart in space, and tens of thousands of miles apart in culture. Such is the power over us of words which we have ourselves coined. Then a further step is taken:—on a basis of mere words a fantastic structure is raised of mere notions, among which the "Yellow Peril" has had most vogue of late. When a new power, or an old one in new shape, arises on soil which we have labelled "Western,"—for instance, Germany or Italy during the lifetime of men still living, the United States or Russia at an earlier date,—no one descries any special menace in such an event; it is
