282 The National Geographic Magazine 



whole, abide in Asia ; out of the four or 

 five or more races of men, all but one 

 (the Amerind) are indigenes of Asia or 

 its immediate insular and peninsular ex- 

 tensions ; and if Egypt be placed with 

 Arabia (where she belongs in ever}^ cul- 

 tural aspect), then out of the fifty or 

 eighty centuries of recorded history run- 

 ning from the hazy dawn of antiquity to 

 the clear light of modernity, the earlier 

 half must be credited wholly to Asia. 

 Music and drama were old in Asia be- 

 fore Athens and Rome were planted, 

 and oriental schools of painting and 

 sculpture prepared the way for a nobler 

 culmination in Greece and Italy. In 

 industries, the long, long way from 

 bestial tooth and claw to the stone knife 

 and thence to the metal tool was first 

 trodden by Asian folk and their Egyp- 

 tian brethren ; nearly all of the world's 

 domesticated animals came from Asia, 

 where horses and kine, sheep and swine, 

 and the dog and fowl were tamed in the 

 eastern morning of humanity (undoubt- 

 edly through uncounted generations of 

 totemism and beast-worship after the 

 manner of all lowly men) and the cat and 

 the camel were caught in some part of 

 that industrial tide which ebbed and 

 flowed over the Red Sea basin for mil- 

 lenniums, while the hardy reindeer of 

 the arctic and the ponderous elephant 

 of the tropics were enslaved so late as 

 yet to retain the characters of their 

 wilder kindred ; so, too, the world's 

 richest crop-plants, like wheat and rice, 

 oats and barley, were created in Asia by 

 ages of experiment to feed millions, and 

 to render all other lands eternal debtors 

 to the queenly continent. The funda- 

 mental laws of the world, from mother- 

 right to the Decalogue and from blood- 

 venge to the Golden Rule, were framed 

 in Asian centers and tested by the ex- 

 perience of millions before their germs 

 were exported by Cecrops and Romulus 

 and sown b)^ Solon as seeds of future 

 justice ; and it is to Asia that the stu- 

 dent turns for the longest dynasties, the 



largest nations, the grandest empires in 

 histor}^ Most of the well-springs of 

 language flowing westward to unite in 

 the great Aryan reservoir' of world- 

 speech arose in Asia ; several Asian 

 centers gave letters to the eastern world 

 long before Cadmus came to Greece ; 

 and despite the teeming output of the 

 occidental press of a century, a large 

 share of the literature of the world is 

 still Asian, and leading poets and pro- 

 saists of western lands are flocking back 

 to the oriental storehouse for motives 

 just as their contemporaries are build- 

 ing new towns out of the ruins (and for 

 the spoils) of ancient cities. Of the 

 nine world religions that have spread to 

 millions of men — Shintoism, BrahmauT 

 ism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, 

 Judaism, Zoroastrism, Mohammedism, 

 with the sublimation of their finest es- 

 sences in Christianity — all were nur- 

 tured in Asia, and all but one attained 

 highest development beyond the Bos- 

 phorus ; indeed of the modern sciences, 

 three — mathematics, astronomy, chem- 

 istry — originated in the almacabala and 

 astrology and alchemy of ancient Asia; 

 while the metaphysical philosophies of 

 even mid-European shrines are dull and 

 feeble besides the ethereal emanations 

 of the oriental mind, emanations so sub- 

 tle yet strong as to react in bodily ab- 

 negation (in the self-immolation of the 

 suttee, in the ecstatic self-torture of the 

 dervish dance, and in the hypnotic self- 

 paralysis of priestly fakirs) far tran- 

 scending the saner powers of the western 

 world. 



Such is human Asia. Seen in any 

 aspect, she is extended, picturesque, 

 majestic, full of meaning ; viewed in 

 her various phases at once, she is be- 

 wildering in wealth of detail, if not ah 

 utter chaos of redundant facts. It were 

 easier to deal with the human affairs of 

 all of the rest of the world together than 

 with those of Asia alone. 



Happily the scientific student is not 



