in the Far-Eastern trade have by this time learnt this peculiarity, and protect themselves against it by such devices as splitting up their orders and giving them in different names.
The subject is an extremely curious one. Sometimes, after a recurrence of astounding instances, one is apt to exclaim that Japanese logic is the very antipodes of European logic, that it is like London and New Zealand,—when the sun shines on the one, "tis night-time in the other, and vice versâ. Were it really so, action would be easy enough:—one would simply have to go by the "rule of contraries." But no; that will not do either. The contradiction is only occasional, it only manifests itself sporadically and along certain,—or rather, uncertain—lines; it is more like a fold in a garment, a crease which you know not where to expect; and the result is that the oldest resident for all that his hair has grown grey in the land of the bamboo and the jinrikisha—may still, to the end of the chapter, be pulled up sharp, and forced to exclaim that all his experience does not yet suffice to probe the depths of the mental disposition of this fascinating, but enigmatical race.
Race, yes, that is it. The word slipped accidentally from our pen; but racial difference is doubtless the explanation of the phenomenon under discussion,—an explanation which, it is true, explains nothing, a key not possible practically to fit into the lock, but nevertheless an index of the truth. Why so? Because "Man" is an exploded fiction. Instead of "Man" in the abstract, anthropology shows us races of men, each with an intellectual constitution differing slightly from other races. That each race should object to the others, should fail to enter into the ways and thoughts of the others, is but one aspect of the assertion of its own individuality. But here a distinction is called for. Europeans dislike the Chinaman or the "Nigger" instinctively, but they are not perplexed by him, because they dismiss him summarily as "a queer creature." His pigtail or his black skin accounts for his funny ways. The} would be surprised if he did think as they think. It is when different races have come
