The curious opposition so often

On Eastern people is limited by the curious opposition so often noted between the man of the East and the man of the West in method of action.

The Western man deferentially takes off his hat on entering a house, hut he carefully keeps his lower members covered. When he writes he lays his paper upon the table, and moves his pen from left to right. If he saws a board he has his saw arranged to cut upon the downward stroke so that his whole force may tell. The Eastern man wears his hat into the house, although a king be within, but he takes off his shoes, leaving his feet, perhaps bare and exposed to view. When he writes, he takes up the paper from the table (if he has one) while doing so, and moves his pen from right to left. If he has to saw a board or a log of wood, he makes his saw cut on the up stroke alone. These common instances of a general tendency of Orientals to do exactly the opposite of what Occidentals would do under the same circumstances, have an importance deeper than their picturesqueness when on exhibition.

They are surface indications of a reversal in the point from which life is viewed. When the Oriental wears his hat into the house, it is because he feels that his shaven head would make him grotesque if exhibited to others. The idea that leads him to take off his shoes is that presently he is going to sit down on the floor, and he does not wish to soil his clothes when he does so. If he has no table at which to write it is because he would be obliged to move in order to use it, if he had one. To write where he is requires that he shall rest the paper on the palm of his hand; and this again makes it necessary for him to move his pen from right to left. If he has his saw made so that it does its work when drawn back instead of when it is pushed forward, it is because he prefers to sit while sawing, in order to avoid too severe exertion daily tours istanbul.

Continent of Asia labour

In Western lands it is quite possible that a man will work without the need to work; because idleness is burdensome and ruinous. But in Asia this idea is quite incomprehensible. A carpenter from the vicinity of Constantinople, who was earning about eighty cents a day at his trade, heard that in the United States carpenters get two or three dollars a day. So he packed his kit and hastened to that favoured country. After a time his friend’s wrote to ask if the increased pay was a fact. “ Yes,” he wrote back, “ I do get two dollars a day. But so would I have had two dollars a day at home, if I had been willing to work there as hard as they work me in this terrible country.” Throughout the continent of Asia labour is incompatible with personal dignity. Those favoured from on high will be freed from the need for it. Those who have to work are the “ herd ”—the people made for such degradation. Not to work; to be supported by the labour of others; to be waited on by servants; to grow fat through stagnation of the capillaries is an ideal of existence so generally held in the East, that it might almost be styled the Asiatic scheme of complete happiness. It was an Asiatic to whom God once said “ Thou fool.” The hope of that man still lives among the millions of Asia. It is the hope to be able to say “ Soul take thine ease, for thou hast much goods laid up for many years.”

The man of the West glories in examining, testing, discovering unknown facts. In Asia, the experimental stage of existence ended before any Western nation had come out of its caves or imagined dress goods better than skins. The Fathers have examined everything and they have fixed the best in their saws and proverbs and rules. The old Hebrew preacher expressed the opinions of Asiatics when he said “ That which is hath been already, and that which is to be hath already been, and God seeketh again that which is passed away.” The hope of the West is in the aspiration of the individual. The purpose of the East is that the mass shall always repress and overwhelm the aspiring individual.