When the Oriental, therefore, says that man is a worm or "I am a worm," he is just as much _obeying the cumulative_ pressure of his Asiatic ancestry, and voicing the inherited submission of the Oriental mind, as Prometheus, with the vulture at his breast, and shaking his hand in the face of the gods, expresses the revolt of the European mind. The normal state for the Asiatic is submission; for the European it is independence. Slavery has a fascination for the children of the east. The air of independence is too sharp for them. They crave a master, a Sultan or a Czar, who shall own them body and soul. Through long practice, they have acquired the art of servility and flattery, of salaams and prostrations--an art in which they have become so efficient that it would be to them like throwing away so much capital to abandon its practice. They expect to go to Heaven on their knees. This is not said to hurt the feelings of the races of the Orient. We are explaining the influence of absolutism upon the products and tendencies of the human mind. The religion of the Orient, then, notwithstanding its many beautiful features like its politics, is a _product of the suppressed_ mind, which finds in the creeping worm of the dust the measure of its own worth. How different is the European from the Asiatic in this respect! The latter crawls upon the stage of this magnificent universe with the timidity, hesitancy and tremblings of a worm. True to his bringing up, he falls prostrate, overwhelmed by the marvelous immensities opening before him and the abysses yawning at his feet. He contracts and dwindles in size, imploring with outstretched hands to be spared because he is a poor worm. It is a part of his religion or philosophy that if he admits he is nothing but a worm, the dread powers will not consider him a rival or a rebel, but will look upon him as a confirmed subject, and permit him to live. This is his art, the strategy by which he hopes to secure his salvation. There has never been a republic in Asia, which is another way of saying that the Asiatic mind has never asserted its independence. Hence its thought smacks of slavery. In politics, as in religion, the Asiatic has always been passive. He has never been an actor, but only a spectator. It is his to nod the head, fold the arms and bend the knee. On earth he must have a king and a pope, and in heaven an Allah or a Jehovah. He has not been created for himself, but for the glory of his earthly and heavenly Lords. This radical difference between European self-appreciation and Asiatic self-depreciation furnishes the key to the problem under discussion.