it was before we explained it. In that
case we must seek the exotic in remote places and in exceptional
conditions, if we are to observe it at all. But Lafcadio Hearn cultivated
in himself and taught his students to cultivate a quick alertness to those
qualities of life to which we are usually dulled by habit. Education as he
conceived of it had for its purpose what Pater says is the end of
philosophy, to rouse the human spirit, to startle it into sharp and eager
observation. It is a sign that dulness is already spreading in us, if we
must go far afield for the stimulating, the wondrous, the miraculous. The
growing sensitiveness of a sound education would help us to distinguish
these qualities of romance in the very heart of our daily life. To have so
distinguished them is in my opinion the felicity of Hearn in these
chapters. When he was writing of Japan for European or American readers,
we caught easily enough the exotic atmosphere of the island
kingdom--easily enough, since it was the essence of a world far removed
from ours. The exotic note is quite as strong in these chapters. We shall
begin to appreciate Hearn's genius when we reflect that here he finds for
us the exotic in ourselves.

The first three chapters deal from different standpoints with the same
subject--the characteristic of Western civilization which to the East is
most puzzling, our attitude toward women. Hearn attempted in other essays
also to do full justice to this fascinating theme, but these illustrations
are typical of his method. To the Oriental it is strange to discover a
civilization in which the love of husband and wife altogether supersedes
the love of children for their parents, yet this is the civilization he
will meet in English and in most Western literatures. He can understand
the love of individual women, as we understand the love of individual men,
but he will not easily understand our worship of women as a sex, our
esteem of womankind, our chivalry, our way of taking woman as a religion.
How difficult, then, will he find such a poem as Tennyson's "Princess," or
most English novels. He will wonder why the majority of all Western
stories are love stories, and why in English literature the love story
takes place before marriage, whereas in French and other Continental
literatures it usually follows marriage. In Japan marriages are the
concern of the parents; with us they are the concern of the lovers, who
must choose their mates in comp