But that portion of it which we each know as self, is it not like to a

drop of rain seen in its falling through the air? Indistinguishable
the particle was in the cloud whence it came; indistinguishable it

will become again in the ocean whither it is bound. Its personality
is but its passing phase from a vast impersonal on the one hand to

an equally vast impersonal on the other. Thus seers preached in the
past; so modem science is hinting to-day. With us the idea seems the

bitter fruit of material philosophy; by them it was looked upon as
the fairest flower of their faith. What is dreaded now as the

impious suggestion of the godless four thousand years ago was
reverenced as a sacred tenet of religion.

Shorter even than his short threescore years and ten is that soul's
life of which man is directly cognizant. Bounded by two seemingly

impersonal states is the personal consciousness of which he is made
aware: the one the infantile existence that precedes his boyish

discovery, the other the gloom that grows with years,--two twilights
that fringe the two borders of his day. But with the Far Oriental,

life is all twilight. For in Japan and China both states are found
together. There, side by side with the present unconsciousness of

the babe exists the belief in a coming unconsciousness for the man.
So inseparably blended are the two that the known truth of the one

seems, for that very bond, to carry with it the credentials of the
other. Can it be that the personal, progressive West is wrong, and

the impersonal, impassive East right? Surely not. Is the other side
of the world in advance of us in mind-development, even as it

precedes us in the time of day; or just as our noon is its night,
may it not be far in our rear? Is not its seemingwisdom rather the

precociousness of what is destined never to go far?
Brought suddenly upon such a civilization, after the blankness of a

long ocean voyage, one is reminded instinctively of the feelings of
that bewildered individual who, after a dinner at which he had

eventually ceased to be himself, was by way of pleasantry left out
overnight in a graveyard, on their way home, by his humorously

inclined companions; and who, on awaking alone, in a still dubious
condition, looked around him in surprise, rubbed his eyes two or

three times to no purpose, and finally muttered in a tone of
awe-struck conviction, "Well, either I'm the first to rise, or I'm a

long way behind time!"
Whether their failure to follow the natural course of evolution

results in bringing them in at the death just the same or not, these
people are now, at any rate, stationary not very far from the point

at which we all set out. They are still in that childish state of
development before self-consciousness has spoiled the sweet

simplicity of nature. An impersonal race seems never to have fully
grown up.

Partly for its own sake, partly for ours, this most distinctive
feature of the Far East, its marked impersonality, is well worthy

particular attention; for while it collaterally suggests pregnant
thoughts about ourselves, it directly underlies the deeper oddities

of a civilization which is the modern eighth wonder of the world.
We shall see this as we look at what these people are, at what they

were, and at what they hope to become; not historically, but
psychologically, as one might perceive, were he but wise enough, in

an acorn, besides the nut itself, two oaks, that one from which it
fell, and that other which from it will rise. These three states,

which we may call its potential past, present, and future, may be
observed and studied in three special outgrowths of a race's

character: in its language, in its every-day thoughts, and in its
religion. For in the language of a people we find embalmed the

spirit of its past; in its every-day thoughts, be they of arts or
sciences, is wrapped up its present life; in its religion lie

enfolded its dreamings of a future. From out each of these three
subjects in the Far East impersonality stares us in the face.

Upon this quality as a foundation rests the Far Oriental character.
It is individually rather than nationally that I propose to scan it

now. It is the action of a particle in the wave of world-development
I would watch, rather than the propagation of the wave itself.

Inferences about the movement of the whole will follow of themselves
a knowledge of the motion of its parts.

But before we attack the subject esoterically, let us look a moment
at the man as he appears in his relation to the community. Such a

glance will suggest the peculiaratmosphere of impersonality that
pervades the people.

However lacking in cleverness, in merit, or in imagination a man may
be, there are in our Western world, if his existence there be so

much as noticed at all, three occasions on which he appears in print.
His birth, his marriage, and his death are all duly chronicled in

type, perhaps as sufficientlytypical of the general unimportance of
his life. Mention of one's birth, it is true, is an aristocratic

privilege, confined to the world of English society. In democratic
America, no doubt because all men there are supposed to be born free

and equal, we ignore the first event, and mention only the last two
episodes, about which our national astuteness asserts no such

effacing equality.
Accepting our newspaper record as a fair enough summary of the

biography of an average man, let us look at these three momentous
occasions in the career of a Far Oriental.

Chapter 2. Family.
In the first place, then, the poor little Japanese baby is ushered

into this world in a sadly impersonal manner, for he is not even
accorded the distinction of a birthday. He is permitted instead

only the much less special honor of a birth-year. Not that he
begins his separate existenceotherwise than is the custom of

mortals generally, at a definiteinstant of time, but that very
little subsequent notice is ever taken of the fact. On the contrary,

from the moment he makes his appearance he is spoken of as a year
old, and this same age he continues to be considered in most simple

ease of calculation, till the beginning of the next calendar year.
When that epoch of general rejoicing arrives, he is credited with

another year himself. So is everybody else. New Year's day is a
common birthday for the community, a sort of impersonalanniversary

for his whole world. A like reckoning is followed in China and
Korea. Upon the disadvantages of being considered from one's birth

up at least one year and possibly two older than one really is,
it lies beyond our present purpose to expatiate. It is quite evident

that woman has had no voice in the framing of such a chronology.
One would hardly imagine that man had either, so astronomic is the

system. A communistic age is however but an unavoidable detail of
the general scheme whose most suggestive feature consists in the

subordination of the actual birthday of the individual to the
fictitious birthday of the community. For it is not so much the

want of commemoration shown the subject as the character of the
commemoration which is significant. Some slight notice is indeed

paid to birthdays during early childhood, but even then their
observance is quite secondary in importance to that of the great

impersonal anniversaries of the third day of the third moon and the
fifth day of the fifth moon. These two occasions celebrated the

coming of humanity into the world with an impersonality worthy of
the French revolutionarycalendar. The first of them is called the

festival of girls, and commemorates the birth of girls generally,
the advent of the universalfeminine, as one may say. The second is

a correspondinganniversary for boys. Owing to its sex, the latter
is the greater event of the two, and in consequence of its most

conspicuous feature is styled the festival of fishes. The fishes
are hollow paper images of the "tai" from four to six feet in length,

tied to the top of a long pole planted in the ground and tipped with
a gilded ball. Holes in the paper at the mouth and the tail enable

the wind to inflate the body so that it floats about horizontally,
swaying hither and thither, and tugging at the line after the manner

of a living thing. The fish are emblems of good luck, and are set
up in the courtyard of every house where a son has been born during

the year. On this auspicious day Tokio is suddenly transformed into
eighty square miles of aquarium.

For any more personal purpose New Year's day eclipses all particular
anniversaries. Then everybody congratulates everybody else upon

everything in general, and incidentally upon being alive. Such
substitution of an abstract for a concrete birthday, although

exceedingly convenient for others, must at least conduce to
self-forgetfulness on the part of its proper possessor, and tend

inevitably to merge the identity of the individual in that of the