Page:Japan - A Lecture.djvu/24

22 It has forcibly burst upon your notice. And the time has come, when you have to be roused into full consciousness of the truth by which you live, so that you may not be taken unawares. The past has been God's gift to you; about the present, you must make your own choice.

So the questions you have to put to yourself are these,—"Have we read the world wrong, and based our relation to it upon an ignorance of human nature. Is the instinct of the West right, where she builds her national welfare behind the barricade of a universal distrust of humanity?" You must have detected a strong accent of fear whenever the West has discussed the possibility of the rise of an Eastern race. The reason of it is this, that the power by whose help she thrives, is an evil power; so long as it is held on her own side she can be safe, while the rest of the world trembles. The vital ambition of the present civilisation of Europe is to have the exclusive possession of the devil. All her armaments and diplomacy are directed upon this one object. But these costly rituals for invocation of the evil spirit lead through a path of prosperity to the brink of cataclysm. The furies of terror, that the West has let loose upon God's world, come back to threaten herself and goad her into preparations of more and more frightfulness; this gives her no rest and makes her forget all else but the perils that she causes to others and incurs