His interpretation of us, therefore, touches our sensitiveness in regions--and in a degree--which perhaps his Japanese students were unconscious of; we too marvel as well as they at his skill in explaining, but we are sensitive to what he found necessary to explain.
We read less for the explanation than for the inventory of ourselves.
Any interpretation of life which looks closely to the facts will probably increase our sense of mystery and of strangeness in common things.

If on the other hand it is a theory of experience which chiefly interests us, we may divert our attention somewhat from the experience to the theory, leaving the world as humdrum as it was before we explained it.

In that case we must seek the exotic in remote places and in exceptional conditions, if we are to observe it at all.

But Lafcadio Hearn cultivated in himself and taught his students to cultivate a quick alertness to those qualities of life to which we are usually dulled by habit.

Education as he conceived of it had for its purpose what Pater says is the end of philosophy, to rouse the human spirit, to startle it into sharp and eager observation.