The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862, page 99 by Various Authors
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emory of some twenty-five years, what events have occurred to verify the remark. Civilization changes all the preconceived perfections of the past, and introduces new scenes of life; it reforms without injuring, and leaves us undecided as to the value of the progress made. New customs and new habits leave man where he was; his nature is still the same, and perhaps he has only engrafted on a faulty structure what neither embellishes nor improves, and shows how slow is the progress of the human mind toward this goal for which it has, since the commencement of time, been bent.
This is peculiarly verified in the 'Orient,' the most ancient of climes and lands. Through the mist of so many centuries, so many thousands of years, the 'far East' has followed the 'even tenor of its way' through revolutions and systems; its usages have been consecrated by time, and the parent has handed down to his son the usages which were more nearly allied to the natural state of man than those of the more famed and progressing 'West.' The animal has had more sway than the intellectual part of his nature, and what the curious traveler most admires is the still primitive condition of the latter. Violence there reigns superior to reason, and if changes be made, the former consults but little the latter in the measures which it adopts for the prosecution of its plans. There is seldom any appeal made by the reformer to the understandings of the people to be reformed; they must blindly adopt the innovations offered, and this without the means of contrasting what they are thus compelled to receive at the hand of the bestower with what they forsake. Tossed in the billows of doubt, they are exposed to the rocks of misconception, and are too often wrecked through the total absence of any chart to guide them in their new voyage of life. The transitory step is always a dangerous one to a people who have not entire confidence in their leader, for his plans may inspire neither conviction nor approval, and if they fail, leave his followers expos