ABSTRACT
So here we are finally settled in our new lodgings; the days pass in quick succession. For the next three years or so each one of them will add to our experience and help us penetrate the great secret of the life of a people so different from our own, and made up of so many races whose ideas and interests intertwine in such a way as to form a tight network whose strands sprout and grow without ever joining, intermarry but never merge. Moralists have come up with the axiom that man, taken in isolation, is difficult to know. By that they mean men like themselves, of the same blood, the same customs, living in the same environment. The farther their studies, however well considered, have led them, the more the learned men who have set themselves the task of analysing their own people have become afraid of their task and the less they are willing to guarantee the ensuing results. As for those who have wanted to understand neighbouring nations, foreign, but living nonetheless within the orb of light of the same civilization, they have rightfully been considered bold spirits, and when by chance they succeed, great spirits. We must therefore assume that philosophizing on Asiatic populations, so unlike our own in every way, is a difficult task, and that many precautions, much attention is necessary in order not to fall into error at every step.
