That this was and is a characteristic of the Orient cannot be disputed.  The facts are abundant and clear.  But the question is whether this is a racial psychic characteristic, such that it inevitably controls the entire thinking of an Oriental, whatever his education, and also whether the Occident is conspicuously deficient in this psychic characteristic.  Thus stated, the question almost answers itself.

Orientals educated in Western methods of thought acquire logical methods of reasoning and teaching.  The old educational methods of Japan are now obsolete.  On the other hand, intuitionalism is not unknown in the West.  Mystics in religion are all conspicuously intuitional.  So too are Christian scientists, faith-healers, and spiritualists.  Great preachers and poets are intuitionalists rather than logicians.

Furthermore, if we look to ancient times, we shall see that even Occidentals were dominated by intuitionalism.  All primitive knowledge was dominated by intuitions, and was as absurd as many still prevalent Oriental conceptions of nature.  The bane of ancient science and philosophy was its reliance on a priori considerations; that is, on intuition.  Inductive, carefully logical methods of thought, of science, of philosophy, and even of religion, are relatively modern developments of the Occidental mind.  We have learned to doubt intuitions unverified by investigation and experimental evidence.  The wide adoption of the inductive method is a recent characteristic of the West.

Modern progress has consisted in no slight degree in the development of logical powers, and particularly in the power of doubting and examining intuitions.  To say that the East is conspicuously intuitional and the West is conspicuously logical is fairly true, but this misses the real difference.  The West is intuitional plus logical.  It uses the intuitional method in every department of life, but it does not stop with it.  An intuition is not accepted as truth until it has been subjected by the reason to the most thorough criticism possible.  The West distrusts the unverified and unguided intuitive judgment.  On the other hand, the East is not inherently deficient in logical power.  When brought into contact with Occidental life, and especially when educated in Occidental methods of thought, the Oriental is not conspicuously deficient in logical ability.

This line of thought leads to the conclusion that the psychic characteristics distinguishing the East from the West, profound though they are, are sociological rather than biological.  They are the characteristics of the civilization rather than of essential race nature.