GK Chesterton seems a little too weirded out by the East. I suppose
‘Orientals’ really were strange and unfamiliar, almost alien, to these
Occidentals. The Chinaman—what an old term—is cited as an example of
the strange and unknowable, because China was not connected to them by
‘a bridge of old tradition’. GK Chesterton could identify more with
David and Isaiah than with Asians in his own time.
I know the influence of Egypt, Babylon, Rome and Greece, but they
don’t account for all that I am. I don’t know enough about the ancient
civilizations of Asia to really identify with them, either, but there
is that feeling of being _home_ here.
I should remember that this ‘civilized history’ he writes of is only
_his_ civilized history. =)
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