The Literature, History, and Civilization of the Japanese [pp. 306-329]

1872.j OF THE JAPANESE. 3I~
some, distinctly Chinese characteristics, slanting eyes, flat
noses, prominent cheek bones; in others, a face which reminds us of the ever nomadic and vagabond race of Polynesia; * with others, a whiteness of skin, which, as our antbropological scholar, M. de Quatrefages, remarks, wonid not prevent them from being recognized as members of our own
Caucasian race.t
What can we not imagine, indeed, of a people endowed for
thousands of years with an activity at times fe#erish yet always sustained, a people placed by Providence in a favorable
geographical situation, if there ever was one, for opening outlets for this insatiable need of expansion. The Japanese
people have been, in all times, essentially curious and eager for
knowledge, intelligent, laborious, energetic. Their native
soil soon became too nanow to hold them, or to insure subsistence to its inhabitants. Although the despotic laws of
the Tycoons have for several centuries held as prisoners in
their island empire the subjects whose colonizing instincts
have been repressed, this was not probably tlie case with the
ancient inhabitants. For them there were on all sides the
ocean and liberty!
You see, gentlemen, how the knowledge of Japanese is
freighted with curious ethnological problems. The in digenous history, which, a pt~()fi, seems to possess but an
ordinary interest for Europeans, whose contact with Japan
dates back scarcely beyond the second half of the sixteenth century, does not lack attractions for those wh~
wish to make it a special study. Doubt it not; the beautiful,
the good, the true, are of all fimes and all countries. This
moral trinity is manifested wherever there have been noble
hearts, in other words, where men have lived in families and
in societies. To discover it we need not go back to those
twilight hours when the old civilizations wallowed in the
beaten tracks of selfishness and vice, but to the full day,
* Comp. O1yplia~t, C7iina anci Jtpa~ K~mpfer, llistorie du Japan, v
1., p. 148.
t Corn p. tlie Marquis de Moges, ~ouveni?~8 d'une ambassade en ~?kine et a~
daport, p. d10.