Page:The Awakening of Japan, by Okakura Kakuzō; 1905.djvu/117

 from the railway station to the bathing resort, has brought about the possibility of a cosmopolitan culture. The nineteenth century has witnessed a wonderful spread in the blessings of scientific sanitation and surgery. Knowledge as well as finance has become organized, and large communities are made capable of collective action and the development of a single personal consciousness.

To the inhabitant of the West all this may well be food for satisfaction; to him it may seem inconceivable that others should think differently. Yet to the bland irony of China the machine appears as a toy, not an ideal. The venerable East still distinguishes between means and ends. The West is for progress, but progress toward what? When material efficiency is complete, what end, asks Asia, will have been