There, side by side with the present unconsciousness of the babe exists the belief in a coming unconsciousness for the man.

So inseparably blended are the two that the known truth of the one seems, for that very bond, to carry with it the credentials of the other.

Can it be that the personal, progressive West is wrong, and the impersonal, impassive East right?
Surely not.

Is the other side of the world in advance of us in mind-development, even as it precedes us in the time of day; or just as our noon is its night, may it not be far in our rear?
Is not its seeming wisdom rather the precociousness of what is destined never to go far?
Brought suddenly upon such a civilization, after the blankness of a long ocean voyage, one is reminded instinctively of the feelings of that bewildered individual who, after a dinner at which he had eventually ceased to be himself, was by way of pleasantry left out overnight in a graveyard, on their way home, by his humorously inclined companions; and who, on awaking alone, in a still dubious condition, looked around him in surprise, rubbed his eyes two or three times to no purpose, and finally muttered in a tone of awe-struck conviction, "Well, either I'm the first to rise, or I'm a long way behind time!" Whether their failure to follow the natural course of evolution results in bringing them in at the death just the same or not, these people are now, at any rate, stationary not very far from the point at which we all set out.

They are still in that childish state of development before self-consciousness has spoiled the sweet simplicity of nature.