The Novelist Discovers the Orient

Extract

It Has been pointed out often enough in recent years that we moderns are dependent at every turn upon goods brought to us from the ends of the world. Some one once took the trouble to count up the number of countries that make their contribution to the typical American breakfast. The total was an amazing one.

But what if one were to attempt to analyze the sources of the ideas and attitudes which are common among us? Would he not find there also the flowing together of a vast variety of influences from widely diversified sources? What the social scientists call interpenetration of cultures is always going on, when diverse cultures come into any kind of contact, and contact of the most distantly separated peoples has become easily possible in recent years through the rapid shrinking of our world.