Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/351

Rh was comic. Far-oriental treatises read excellently well in spots, from such antipodal point of view; the very dry desert of thought being occasionally relieved by unintentional oases of humor. The commentators give us admirable instances of this: one of them gravely explaining Shintō's lack of a moral code by the conclusive statement that only immoral people need moral laws; while another in all seriousness derives neko, a cat, by a kind of protoplasmic fission and subsequent amalgamation from the first syllables of nezumi konomo words which translated, signify "fond of rats," which is much as if one should assert "poet" to have been evolved by a sort of shorthand from "potential etymology."

Indirect evidence of the same lack of ideal activity is shown by the uncommon imitativeness of the race. For to have a foreign idea act with the imperative instancy observable in Japan argues a dearth of native incumbents to dispute it possession. You shall soon be given plenty of instances of this proclivity, of a personal nature. Indeed, this sincerest kind of flattery eventually grows just a trifle flat from mere excess of