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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: Aryan tongues, and in consequence we not only fall into the mistake
of thinking our way the only way, which is bad enough, but, what is
far worse, by not perceiving the other possible paths we quite fail
to appreciate the advantages or disadvantages of following our own.
We are the blind votaries of a species of ancestral language-worship,
which, with all its erudition, tends to narrow our linguistic scope.
A study of Japanese would free us from the fetters of any such
family infatuation. The inviolable rules and regulations of our
mother-tongue would be found to be of relative application only.
For we should discover that speech is a much less categorical matter
than we had been led to suppose. We should actually come to doubt
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