Page:Japan - A Lecture.djvu/10

8 Therefore when, by the mere reason of the lengthiness of their suffering, they threaten to establish the fact of the tune to be a noise, one need not be anxious about music. Very often it is mistakes that require longer time to develop their tangles, while the right answer comes promptly.

You ask me how can I prove that I am right in my confidence that I can see. My answer is because I see something which is positive. There are others who affirm that they see something contrary. It only proves that I am looking on the picture side of the canvas, and they on the blank side. Therefore my short view is of more value than their prolonged stare.

It is a truism to say that shadows accompany light. What you feel, as the truth of a people, has its numberless contradictions,—just as the roundness of the earth is contradicted at every step by its hills and hollows. Those who can boast of a greater familiarity with your country than myself can bring before me loads of contradictions, but I remain firm upon my vision of a truth which does not depend upon its dimension, but upon its vitality.

At first I had my doubts. I thought that I might not be able to see Japan as she is herself, but should have to be content to see the Japan that takes pride in her acrobatics violently to appear as something else. On my first arrival in this country, when I looked out from the balcony of a house on the