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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: a surprisingly beautiful bit of imagery, delightful as it sounds for
a change. Our own tongue has, in its daily vocabulary, far more
suggestive expressions, only familiarity has rendered us callous to
their use. We employ at every instant words which, could we but
stop to think of them, would strike us as poetic in the ideas they
call up. As has been well said, they were once happy thoughts of
some bright particular genius bequeathed to posterity without so
much as an accompanying name, and which proved so popular that they
soon became but symbols themselves.
Their languages are paralleled by their whole life. A lack of any
fanciful ideas is one of the most salient traits of all Far Eastern
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