Civilization Books

Chapter 1. The Importance of Names "What's in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet." Notwithstanding these lines, I maintain that the selection of names is important. They should always be carefully chosen. They are apt to influence friendships or to excite prejudices according to their significance. We Chinese are very particular in this matter. When a... more...

PREFACE The articles included in this book have already appeared, those from the East in the Manchester Guardian, those from America in the English Review. In reprinting them, I have chosen a title which may serve also as an apology. What I offer is not Reality; but appearances to me. From such appearances perhaps, in time, Reality may be constructed. I claim only to make my contribution. I do so... more...

INTRODUCTION The tragedy enacted in China during the closing year of the nineteenth century marks an epoch in the history of China and of the world. Two world-views, two types of civilization met in deadly conflict, and the inherent weakness of isolated, belated, superstitious and corrupt paganism was revealed. Moreover, during this, China's crisis, Japan for the first time stepped out upon the... more...

LECTURE I. Bertha to Osburga. In the short review of the present state of English Art, given you last year, I left necessarily many points untouched, and others unexplained. The seventh lecture, which I did not think it necessary to read aloud, furnished you with some of the corrective statements of which, whether spoken or not, it was extremely desirable that you should estimate the balancing weight.... more...

{vii} PREFACE "The human race, to which so many of my readers belong," as Mr. Gilbert Chesterton begins one of his books by saying, has half its members in Asia. That Americans should know something about so considerable a portion of our human race is manifestly worth while. And really to know them at all we must know them as they are to-day. Vast changes are in progress, and even as I write... more...

THE VALUE OF GREECE TO THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD If the value of man’s life on earth is to be measured in dollars and miles and horse-power, ancient Greece must count as a poverty-stricken and a minute territory; its engines and implements were nearer to the spear and bow of the savage than to our own telegraph and aeroplane. Even if we neglect merely material things and take as our standard the actual... more...

I GENERAL SURVEY F.S. MARVIN We are trying in this book to give some impression of the principal changes and developments of Western thought in what might roughly be called 'the last generation', though this limit of time has been, as it must be, treated liberally. From the political point of view the two most impressive milestones, events which will always mark for the consciousness of the... more...

If I can say anything to show that my name is really Makepeace, and to increase the source of love between the two countries, then please, God, I will."—W. M. Thackeray, in Letters to an American Family. "Certainly there is nothing like England, and there never has been anything like England in the world. Her wonderful history, her wonderful literature, her beautiful architecture, the... more...

THE INVENTION OF A NEW RELIGION (1) (Note 1) The writer of this pamphlet could butskim over a wide subject. For full information seeVolume I. of Mr. J. Murdoch's recently-published"History of Japan," the only critical work on thatsubject existing in the English language. Voltaire and the other eighteenth-century philosophers, who held religions to be the invention of priests, have been... more...

Chapter LIX: The Crusades.—Part I. Preservation Of The Greek Empire.—Numbers, Passage, AndEvent, Of The Second And Third Crusades.—St. Bernard.—Reign Of Saladin In Egypt And Syria.—His Conquest OfJerusalem.—Naval Crusades.—Richard The First Of England.—Pope Innocent The Third; And The Fourth And Fifth Crusades.—The Emperor Frederic The Second.—Louis The Ninth OfFrance; And The Two... more...