ains two things: first it acquires directly a great
deal from both places and peoples that it meets, and secondly it is
constantly put to its own resources in its struggle for existence,
and becomes more personal as the outcome of such strife. The changed
conditions, the hostile forces it finds, necessitate mental ingenuity
to adapt them and influence it unconsciously. To see how potent these
influences prove we have but to look at the two great branches of the
Aryan family, the one that for so long now has stayed at home, and the
one that went abroad. Destitute of stimulus from without, the Indo-Aryan
mind turned upon itself and consumed in dreamy metaphysics the
imagination which has made its cousins the leaders in the world's
progress to-day. The inevitable numbness of monotony crept over the
stay-at-homes. The deadly sameness of their surroundings produced its
unavoidable effect. The torpor of the East, like some paralyzing poison,
stole into their souls, and they fell into a drowsy slumber only to
dream in the land they had formerly wrested from its possessors. Their
birthright passed with their cousins into the West.

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 pr