ow these schemes are highly ingenious. But they are not convincing.
Their authors should remember the old adage that you cannot eat your
cake and have it too. When we realize the abysmal antithesis between the
economic systems of the old East and the modern West, any attempt to
combine the most congenial points of both while eschewing their defects
seems an attempt to reconcile irreconcilables and about as profitable as
trying to square the circle. As Lowes Dickinson wisely observes:
"Civilization is a whole. Its art, its religion, its way of life, all
hang together with its economic and technical development. I doubt
whether a nation can pick and choose; whether, for instance, the East
can say, 'We will take from the West its battleships, its factories, its
medical science; we will not take its social confusion, its hurry and
fatigue, its ugliness, its over-emphasis on activity.'... So I expect
the East to follow us, whether it like it or no, into all these
excesses, and to go right through, not round, all that we have been
through on its way to a higher phase of civilization."[238]

This seems to be substantially true. Judged by the overwhelming body of
evidence, the East, in its contemporary process of transformation, will
follow the West--avoiding some of our more patent mistakes, perhaps,
but, in the main, proceeding along similar lines. And, as already
stated, this transformation is modifying every phase of Eastern life. We
have already examined the process at work in the religious, political,
and economic phases. To the social phase let us now turn.

FOOTNOTES:

[206] F. B. Fisher, _India's Silent Revolution_, p. 53 (New York, 1920).

[207] Rev. A. J. Brown, "Economic Changes in Asia," _The Century_,
March, 1904.

[208] _I. e._ the purveyor of the native vegetable-oils.

[209] R. Mukerjee, _The Foundations of Indian Economics_, p. 5 (London,
1916).

[210] On these points, see Fisher, _op. cit._; Sir T. Morison, _The
Economic Transition in India_ (London, 1911); Sir Valentine Chirol,
_Indian Unrest_ (London, 1910); D. H. Dodwell, "Economic Transition in
India," _Economic Journal_, December, 1910; J. P. Jones, "The Present
Situation in India," _Journal of Race Development_, July, 1910.

[211] L. Bertrand, _Le Mirage oriental_, pp. 20-21 (Paris, 1910).

[212] Sir T. Morison, _The Economic Transition in India_, p. 181.

[213] Quoted by Jones, _supra_.

[214] _The Indian Review_ (Madras), 1910.

[215] Cl