The tourist naturally concludes that the unity characterizing the Orient is fundamental; that Oriental civilization is due to Oriental race brain, and Occidental civilization is due to Occidental race brain.

This impression and this conclusion of the tourist are not, however, limited to him.  The “old resident” in the East becomes increasingly convinced with every added year that an Oriental is a different kind of human being from a Westerner.  As he becomes accustomed to the externals of the Oriental civilization, he forgets its comical aspects, he even comes to appreciate many of its conveniences.  But in proportion as he becomes familiar with its languages, its modes of thought and feeling, its business methods, its politics, its literature, its amusements, does he increasingly realize the gulf set between an Oriental and an Occidental.  The inner life of the spirit of an Oriental would be utterly inane, spiritless to the average Occidental.  The “old resident” accordingly knows from long experience what the tourist only guesses from a hasty glance, that the characteristic differences distinguishing the peoples of the East and the West are racial and ineradicable.  An Oriental is an Oriental, and that is the ultimate, only thoroughgoing explanation of his nature.

The conception of the tourist and the “old resident” crops up in nearly every article and book touching on Far Eastern peoples.  Whatever the point of remark or criticism, if it strikes the writer as different from the custom of Occidentals, it is laid to the account of Orientalism.

This conception, however, of distinguishing Oriental characteristics, is not confined to popular writers and unscientific persons.  Even professed and eminent sociologists advocate it.  Prof.  Le Bon, in his sophistic volume on the “Psychology of Peoples,” advocates it strenuously.  A few quotations from this interesting work may not be out of place.

“The object of this work is to describe the psychological characteristics which constitute the soul of races, and to show how the history of a people and its civilization is determined by these characteristics."[DH] “The point that has remained most clearly fixed in mind, after long journeys through the most varied countries, is that each people possesses a mental constitution as unaltering as its anatomical characteristics, a constitution which is the source of its sentiments, thoughts, institutions, beliefs, and arts."[DI]

“The life of a people, its institutions, beliefs, and arts, are but the visible expression of its invisible soul.  For a people to transform its institutions, beliefs, and arts it must first transform its soul."[DJ]

“Each race possesses a constitution as unvarying as its anatomical constitution.  There seems to be no doubt that the former corresponds to a certain special structure of the brain."[DK]

“A negro or a Japanese may easily take a university degree or become a lawyer; the sort of varnish he thus acquires is, however, quite superficial and has no influence on his mental constitution.  What no education can give him, because they are created by heredity alone, are the forms of thought, the logic, and above all the character of the Western man."[DL]