their
respective masses. In social intercourse the higher civilization is
unaffected by the lower, in any important way, while the lower is
mightily modified, and in sufficient time is lifted to the grade of
the higher in all important respects. This is a law of great
significance. The Orient is becoming Occidentalized to a degree and at
a rate little realized by travelers and not fully appreciated by the
Orientals themselves. They know that mighty changes have taken place,
and are now taking place, but they do not fully recognize their
nature, and the multitudes do not know the source of these changes. In
so far as the East has surpassed the West in any important direction
will the East influence the West.

In saying, then, as we did in our first chapter, that the Japanese
have already formed an Occidento-Oriental civilization, we meant that
Japan has introduced not only the external and mechanical elements of
Western civilization into her new social order, but also its inner and
determinative principle--individualism. In saying that, as the
Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots, so Japan
will never become thoroughly Occidentalized, we did not intend to say
that she was so Oriental in her physiological nature, in her "race
soul," that she could make no fundamental social transformation; but
merely that she has a social heredity that will always and inevitably
modify every Occidental custom and conception that may be brought to
this land. Although in time Japan may completely individualize her
social order, it will never be identical with that of the West. It
will always bear the marks of her Oriental social heredity in
innumerable details. The Occidental traveler will always be impressed
with the Orientalisms of her civilization. Although the Oriental
familiar with the details of the pre-Meiji social order will be
impressed with what seems to him the complete Occidentalization of her
new civilization and social order, although to-day communalism and
individualism are the distinguishing characteristics respectively of
the East and the West, they are not necessary characteristics due to
inherent race nature. The Orient is sure to become increasingly
individualistic. The future evolution of the great races of the earth
is to be increasingly convergent in all the essentials of individual
and racial prosperity, but in countless non-essential details the
customs of the past will remain, to give each rac