Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/196

 ingeniously conceived and practiced. Indeed, we suffer more from the implicit confidence we repose in the slyboot who has earned a reputation for candor and straightforward dealing. We feed the parasite in him. And it is a poor and unprofitable skepticism that only works one way. Honesty itself ceases to be a virtue when it is made a means to an ignoble end. And the Oriental, whose craftiness is often practised in self-defense, negatively, seldom regards it as a positive method, a material virtue, an instrument of success.

It was Bismark, I think, who conceived the idea of sometimes speaking the truth to deceive his antagonists. An originality in political tactics which the Oriental diplomat might well imitate, and to better advantage. And when the OrienatlOriental [sic] merchant takes to advertising, he will further realize the advantage of lapsing periodically into truth. His wonted subtlety will then become more subtle, more complex, more confounding. And the people of the West, in changing their point of view regarding