ABSTRACT
"We Europeans are beginning to be educated by ancient China": thus did Alphonse Paquet some ten years ago summarize the feeling of a small group of cosmopolitan thinkers and students of the East. The writings of the Chinese sages form for many of the younger generation of our day a necessary link in the chain of their intellectual experiences, for many others unfortunately merely a part of that world-literature which they treat as a storehouse of literary delicacies. Western and Eastern culture are by such persons frequently shuffled together with a sometimes amazing lack of precision —an example of the prevalence of slovenly thinking, that 'synthetic' thinking of which there is so much talk nowadays.
