We shall begin to appreciate Hearn's genius when we reflect that here he finds for us the exotic in ourselves.
The first three chapters deal from different standpoints with the same subject--the characteristic of Western civilization which to the East is most puzzling, our attitude toward women.

Hearn attempted in other essays also to do full justice to this fascinating theme, but these illustrations are typical of his method.

To the Oriental it is strange to discover a civilization in which the love of husband and wife altogether supersedes the love of children for their parents, yet this is the civilization he will meet in English and in most Western literatures.

He can understand the love of individual women, as we understand the love of individual men, but he will not easily understand our worship of women as a sex, our esteem of womankind, our chivalry, our way of taking woman as a religion.
How difficult, then, will he find such a poem as Tennyson's "Princess," or most English novels.

He will wonder why the majority of all Western stories are love stories, and why in English literature the love story takes place before marriage, whereas in French and other Continental literatures it usually follows marriage.