In the case of the Altaic races which we are considering, cause and
effect mutually strengthened each other. That they did not travel more
is due primarily to a lack of enterprise consequent upon a lack of
imagination, and then their want of travel told upon their imagination.
They were also unfortunate in their journeying. Their travels were
prematurely brought to an end by that vast geographical Nirvana the
Pacific Ocean, the great peaceful sea as they call it themselves. That
they would have journeyed further is shown by the way their dreams went
eastward still. They themselves could not for the preventing ocean, and
the lapping of its waters proved a nation's lullaby.
One thing, I think, then, our glance at Far Eastern civilization has
more than suggested. The soul, in its progress through the world, tends
inevitably to individualization. Yet the more we perceive of the cosmos
the more do we recognize an all-pervading unity in it. Its soul must
be one, not many. The divine power that made all things is not itself
multifold. How to reconcile the ever-increasing divergence with
an eventual similarity is a problem at present transcending our
generalizations. What we know would seem to be opposed to what we
must infer. But perception of how we shall merge the personal in the
universal, though at present hidden from sight, may sometime come to
us, and the seemingly irreconcilable will then turn out to involve no
contradiction at all. For this much is certain: grand as is the great
conception of Buddhism, majestic as is the idea of the stately rest it
would lead us to, the road here below is not one the life of the world
can follow. If earthly existence be an evil, then Buddhism will help us
ignore it; but if by an impulse we cannot explain we instinctively crave
activity of mind, then the great gospel of Gautama touches us not; for
to abandon self--egoism, that is, not selfishness is the true vacuum
which nature abhors. As for Far Orientals, they themselves furnish proof
against themselves. That impersonality is not man's earthly goal they
unwittingly bear witness; for they are not of those who will survive.
Artistic attractive people that they are, their civilization is like
their own tree flowers, beautiful blossoms destined never to bear fruit;
for whatever we may conceive the far future of another life to be, the
immediate effect of impersonality cannot but be annihilating. If these
people continue in their old course, their earthly career is closed.
Just as surely as morning passes into afternoon, so surely are these
races of the Far East, if unchanged, destined to disappear before the
advancing nations of the West. Vanish they will off the face of the
earth and leave our planet the eventual possession of the dwellers where
the day declines. Unless their newly imported ideas really take root, it
is from this whole world that Japanese and Koreans, as well as Chinese,
will inevitably be excluded. Their Nirvana is already being realized;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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