Note 822 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

It is this marked national individuality, developed by isolation and accompanied often by a precocious civilization, in combination with the opposite fact of the imminent possibility of an expansive unfolding, a brilliant efflorescence followed by a wide dispersal of its seeds of culture and of empire, which has assigned to islands in all times a great historical rôle. Rarely do these wholly originate the elements of civilization. For that their area is too small. But whatever seed ripen in the wide fields of the continents the islands transplant to their own forcing houses; there they transform and perfect the flower. Japan borrowed freely from China and Korea, as England did from continental Europe; but these two island realms have brought Asiatic and European civilization to their highest stage of development. Now the borrowers are making return with generous hand. The islands are reacting upon the continents. Japanese ideals are leavening the whole Orient from Manchuria to Ceylon. English civilization is the standard of Europe. "The Russian in his snows is aiming to be English," says Emerson. "England has inoculated all nations with her civilization, intelligence and tastes."822