In Japan there is going on to-day a process unique in the history of the human race.  Two streams of civilization, that of the far East and that of the far West, are beginning to flow in a single channel.  These streams are exceedingly diverse, in social structure, in government, in moral ideals and standards, in religion, in psychological and metaphysical conceptions.  Can they live together?  Or is one going to drive out and annihilate the other?  If so, which will be victor?  Or is there to be modification of both?  In other words, is there to be a new civilization—­a Japanese, an Occidento-Oriental civilization?

The answer is plain to him who has eyes with which to see.  Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?  No more can Japan lose all trace of inherited customs of daily life, of habits of thought and language, products of a thousand years of training in Chinese literature, Buddhist doctrine, and Confucian ethics.  That “the boy is father to the man” is true of a nation no less than of an individual.  What a youth has been at home in his habits of thought, in his purpose and spirit and in their manifestation in action, will largely determine his after-life.  In like manner the mental and moral history of Japan has so stamped certain characteristics on her language, on her thought, and above all on her temperament and character, that, however she may strive to Westernize herself, it is impossible for her to obliterate her Oriental features.  She will inevitably and always remain Japanese.

Japan has already produced an Occidento-Oriental civilization.  Time will serve progressively to Occidentalize it.  But there is no reason for thinking that it will ever become wholly Occidentalized.  A Westerner visiting Japan will always be impressed with its Oriental features, while an Asiatic will be impressed with its Occidental features.  This progressive Occidentalization of Japan will take place according to the laws of social evolution, of which we must speak somewhat more fully in a later chapter.

An important question bearing on this problem is the precise nature of the characteristics differentiating the Occident and the Orient.  What exactly do we mean when we say that the Japanese are Oriental and will always bear the marks of the Orient in their civilization, however much they may absorb from the West?  The importance and difficulty of this question have led the writer to defer its consideration till toward the close of this work.

If one would gain adequate conception of the process now going on, the illustration already used of the mingling of two rivers needs to be supplemented by another, corresponding to a separate class of facts.  Instead of the mingling of rivers, let us watch the confluence of two glaciers.  What pressures!  What grindings!  What upheavals!  What rendings!  Such is the mingling of two civilizations.  It is not smooth and Noiseless, but attended with pressure and pain.  It is a collision in more ways than one.  The unfortunates on whom the pressures of both currents are directed are often quite destroyed.