Percival Lowell

Ooh.

Ooh, this novel was written after the astronomer Percival Lowell reported that he believed he saw canals on the surface of Mars and published them.

And this was headline news.

There are Martians up there.

Already it has wrapped Far Eastern Asia in its winding sheet.

From Soul of the Far East, P. Lowell.

End quote.

delightful reflection for the dwellers where day declines a spectacle to make the gods laugh truly to see the scion of an upstart race by one sweep of his generalising pen consigning to annihilation one-third the inhabitants of the globe a people whose civilisation was hoary-headed before the parent elements that begot his race had advanced beyond nebulosity how like longfellow's iago we westerners are to be sure in the few hundred years we have had to strut across our allotted territory and bask in the afternoon sun we imagine we have exhausted the possibilities of humanity verily we are the people and after us there is none other our god is power strength our standard of excellence inherited from barbarian ancestors through a long line of male progenitors the law salic permitting no feminine modifications says one the chinaman is not popular with us and we do not like the negro it is not that the eyes of the one are set by us and the other is dark-skinned but the chinaman the negro is weak and anglo-saxons don't like weakness the world of thought under the predominant man influence unmollified and unrestrained by its complementary force would become like daniel's fourth beast dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly it had great iron teeth it devoured and brake in pieces and stamped the residue with the feet of it and the most independent of us find ourselves ready at times to fall down and worship this incarnation of power mrs mary a livermore a woman whom i can mention only to admire came near shaking my fate a few weeks ago in my theory of the thinking woman's mission to put in the tender and sympathetic chord in nature's great symphony and counteract or better harmonize the diapason of mere strength and might she was dwelling on the anglo-saxon genius for power and his contempt for weakness and described a scene in san francisco which she had witnessed the incorrigible animal known as the american small boy had pounced upon a simple unoffending chinaman who was taking home his work and had emptied the beautifully laundered contents of his basket into the ditch and said she when that great man stood there and blubbered before that crowd of lawless urchins to any one of whom he might have taught a lesson with his two fists i didn't much care this is said like a man it grates harshly it smacks of the worship of the beast it is contempt for weakness and taken out of its setting it seems to contradict my theory it either shows that one of the highest exponents of the higher education can be at times untrue to the instincts i have ascribed to the thinking woman and to the contribution she is to add to the civilised world or else the influence she wields upon our civilisation may be potent without being necessarily and always direct and conscious The latter is the case.