CHAPTER I WOMAN EAST AND WEST PERHAPS on no other subject do the Orient and the Occident diverge more widely than on that of the status of woman. So far as they really differ, and as they imagine that they differ in their regard for woman, the Orientals and the Occidentals form two distinct human types. From the beginning of their history, the Teutonic races, especially the Anglo-Saxons, have been characterized by their high regard for woman. This trait of the dwellers of northwestern Europe so impressed the Latin Christian missionaries, when they first visited those peoples, that they described them as having "such high regard for woman to the extent that adultery was unknown among them." And while the concluding phrase of this historical testimony does not describe the present state of Anglo-Saxon society with absolute correctness, the statement as a whole seems to me to be a substantially correct description of present Anglo-Saxon life. Among the peoples of northwestern Europe, and especially among their descendants in America, woman enjoys man's highest regard. On the other hand, "the Oriental view of woman" has always been considered by those Western peoples to be very contemptuous. We always hate most deeply that vice which is the opposite of our strongest virtue. We are most likely to exaggerate and to condemn mercilessly any deviation from that which we ourselves consider to be the sacred path of duty. Respect for woman being one of his strongest virtues, the Anglo-Saxon is lashed to fury by what seems to him to be the Oriental's utter disrespect for the mother of the race. As I have already stated in other connections in this work, my object is neither to accuse the Oriental nor to excuse his moral failures. My aim is rather to interpret him to my Western readers and to determine, if possible, to what |