In this point also his observation has proved prophetic; the new poets in America have adopted Japan, as they have adopted Greece, as a literary theme, and it is somewhat exclusively from the fine arts of either country that they draw their idea of its life.
The next chapters which are brought together here, consider the origin and the nature of English and European ethics.

Hearn was an artist to the core, and as a writer he pursued with undivided purpose that beauty which, as Keats reminded us, is truth.

In his creative moments he was a beauty-lover, not a moralist.

But when he turned critic he at once stressed the cardinal importance of ethics in the study of literature.

The art which strives to end in beauty will reveal even more clearly than more complex forms of expression the personality of the artist, and personality is a matter of character, and character both governs the choice of an ethical system and is modified by it.