Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/171

 and their culture. I spoke in the preceding chapter of the wisdom, the necessity of constantly cultivating our national traditions, of applying to them even the eliminating process. But there are certain old traditions which never become effete and which no nation can abandon with profit to itself and to the world. As the tradition, for instance, of the handicrafts in the East, which is being rapidly undermined by the introduction of modern machinery. Orientals do not realize that even in the West there is a growing protest against the universal use of the machine,—against the lethal effects of purely mechanical power. And in their eagerness to imitate us in all things, to rival us in production, they are depriving the world of the artistic and beautiful things of the Orient. Japan, where everything is being foreignized, Europeanized, is a noted example. The machine there is fast replacing the dexterous hands of the artisan; the atelier is being transformed into a factory; the merchant is usurping