IV PRflCE
cultured life (of the West)."' But the arbitrary character of such a standard puzzles the Oriental. A Japanese diplomatist is reported to have said addressing a European audience:
"Fortwo thousand years we kept peace with the rest of the world, and were known to it by the marvels of our delicate ethereal art, and the finely wrought productions ci our ingenious handicrafts, and we were accounted barbarians, But from the day on which we made war on other nations and killed many thousands of our adversaries, you at once admit our claim to rank among civilized nations."
The capricious standard set up by the "educated Western world" does not meet with universal acceptance even in the West. The position that Western civilization is the most perfect the world has yet seen is assailed even there, The chorus in landation of its numberless inventive feats and industrial miracles, even those which like the military aeroplanes, are intended for the pi-actice of barbarity, and of its supposed beneficent work among the benighted peoples of Africa and the East is, now and then, rudely broken by the discordant outbursts of a dissentient minority Even the best of modern clvi Ii sallow's, says Huxley, "appearsto me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possees the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express the
E. B. Tylor 'Primitive Culture," Vol. 1, p. 26.
