of Asia, in its length and breadth, we may note, first, that it lies wholly north of the equator, and in great part between the northern tropic and the arctic circle-that is, in the so-called temperate zone. The inferences as to climate which might be drawn from this are deceptive, owing to modifications occasioned by physical conditions. The great plains of the north and of the south of Siberia and of India-are subject, respectively, to extremes of cold and of heat, due primarily to the vast extent of land in the continent itself, which precludes the moderating power of the sea from exercising extensive influence. The effect of this immense region upon temperature is most strikingly shown in the monsoons, the periodical winds which alternate with the seasons-as land and sea breezes change with night and day-but which during their continuance have the steadiness characteristic of the permanent trades. This phenomenon, which prevails throughout the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the China Sea, is attributable to the alternate heating and cooling of the continent, as the sun moves north or south of the equator, in inducing a periodical set of the atmosphere-from the northeast during the winter, and from the southwest during the summer. Within its main outlines, the greatest breadth of the continent from east to west is about five thousand statute miles, following the thirtieth degree of north latitude; but along the fortieth this distance is increased by some hundreds of miles, through the projection of two peninsulas-Asia Minor on the west, and Korea on the east. Between these two parallels are to be found, speaking roughly, the most decisive natural features, and also those political divisions the unsettled character of which renders the problem of Asia in the present day at once perplexing and imminent. Within this belt are the Isthmus of Suez, Palestine and Syria, Mesopotamia, the greater part of Persia, and Afghanistan-with de the strong mountain ranges that mark these two countries and Armenia-the Pamir, the huge elevations of Tibet, and a large part of the valley of the Yang-tse-kiang, with the lower and most important thousand miles of that river's course. Within it also are the cities of Aleppo, Mosul, and Bagdad, of Teheran and Ispahan, of Merv and Herat, Kabul and Kandahar, and in the far east of China, Peking, Shanghai, Nanking, and Hankow. No one of these is in the territory of a state the stability of which can be said to repose securely upon its own strength, or even upon the certainty of non-interference by ambitious neighbors. The chain of the Himalayas is exterior to, but only a little south of, the zone indicated. Although Japan is extra-continental, it may be interesting to note that the greater part of her territory and the centre of her power lie also within the belt, and extend almost across it, from north to south. Within these bounds, speaking broadly and not exclusively, is the debatable and debated ground. North and south of it, in similar wide generalization, political conditions are relatively determined, though by no means absolutely fixed. Along the northern and southern borders, where exterior impulses impinge, there are uncertainty and jealousy, aggression and defence, not as yet military, but political. Still, whatever its form, such action is at bottom that of conflicting, if not contending, impulses. The division of Asia is east and west, movement is north and south. It is the character of that movement, and its probable future, as indicated by the relative forces, and by the lines which in physics are called those of least resistance, that we are called to study; for in the greatness of the stake, and in the relative settledness of conditions elsewhere, there is assurance that there will

continue to be motion until an adjustment is reached, either in the satisfaction of everybody, or by the definite supremacy of someone of the contestants.... That the dividing line of unsettled political status is along the belt defined may be ascertained by a brief examination of a map. That movement is from and to the north and the south is a matter of history-not yet a generation old-and of names familiar to all readers of news. The mere sound of Turkestan, Khiva, Merv, Herat, Kandahar, Kabul, attests the fact; as do Manchuria and Port Arthur. Thus both in the western half and in the extreme east is observed the same tendency, which would be still more amply demonstrated by an appeal to history but little more remote. It is, in fact, no longer consistent with accuracy of forecast to draw a north and south line of severance; to contemplate eastern Asia apart from western; to dissociate, practically, the conditions and incidents in the one from those in the other. Both form living parts of a large problem, to which both contribute elements of perplexity. The relations of each to the other, and to the whole, must therefore be considered. Accepting provisionally the east and west belt of division as one stage in the process of analysis, we may profitably consider next the character and distribution of the forces whose northward and southward impulses constitute the primary factors in the process of change already initiated and still continuing. Upon a glance at the map one enormous fact immediately obtrudes itself upon the attention the vast, uninterrupted mass of the Russian Empire, stretching without a break in territorial consecutiveness from the meridian of western Asia Minor, until, to the eastward, it overpasses that of Japan. In this huge distance no political obstacles intervene to impede the concentrated action of the disposable strength. Within the dominion of Russia only the distances themselves, and the hindrances-unquestionably great and manifold-imposed by natural conditions, place checks upon her freedom and fulness of movement. To this element of power-central position-is to be added the wedge-shaped outline of her territorial projection into central Asia, strongly supported as this is, on the one flank, by the mountains of the Caucasus and the inland Caspian Seawholly under her control-and on the other by the ranges which extend from Afghanistan northeasterly, along the western frontier of China. From the latter, moreover, she as yet has no serious danger to fear. The fact of her general advance up to the present time, most of which has been made within a generation, so that the point of the wedge is now inserted between Afghanistan and Persia, must be viewed in connection with the tempting relative facility of farther progress through Persia to the Persian Gulf, and with the strictly analogous movement, on the other side of the continent, where long strides have been made through Manchuria to Port Arthur and the Gulf of Pe-chi-li. Thus, alike in the far east and in the far west, we find the same characteristic of remorseless energy, rather remittent than intermittent in its symptoms. Russia, in obedience to natural law and race instinct, is working, geographically, to the southward in Asia by both flanks, her centre covered by the mountains of Afghanistan and the deserts of eastern Turkestan and Mongolia. . . . As north and south are logically opposed, so it might be surmised that practically the opposition to this movement of Russia from the north would find its chief expression to the south of the broad dividing belt, between the thirtieth and fortieth parallels. In a measure this is so, but with a very marked distinction, not only in de

that India possesses Fast & Great Britain. The central bus sutively to China and CARS 981 Cards Australia and the WOW HIRE ISssng thus the concentraRS A Such support as either colony 1 the general policy of an Imperial as mediate relations to however. India is not unsupand unc in the centre, the acquisition a format as i cmendous extension of frontier It wit turns the range of the HimaASK access poitical or peaceful, for inzeaz w ur commerce to the upper valley of the ube to the western provinces of s the Straits Settlements and Mate & Ag at the ace side. Aden and Egypt on are moitas far as land positions can,

me screenses to the eastward or to the SCARL JPected in a broad sense upon the flanks a de trouing zece or upon those of the opposing

sawerations that mark the deployment of the arder and southern powers, which at the resent me are most strongly established upon Asuaz territory A. T. Mahan, Problem of Asia, #. 26-28-See also BALUCHISTAN; PACIFIC OCEAN: BC. 2500 A. D. 1500.

Uzty of Asiatic civilization.—Unifying force of Buddhism-Embodied in the spirit of Japan. -Contrast to western currents of thought.-While the psychological unity of the Oriental nations has not been so clearly and definitely worked out as it has been in the West, notwithstanding all minor national idiosyncrasies, still the Orient has also had its share of international unifying influences. The sacred places in India where the great teacher lived have for two thousand years attracted pilgrims from all parts of the Buddhist world; and earnest students have sought deeper wisdom by communing with the monks of famous monasteries in Burmah and Ceylon. Ever since the embassy of Emperor Ming-ti sought for the new gospel in the year 61, and the sage Fa-hien undertook his great journey, India has thus been visited by seekers after new light. Also the apostles of India's missionary religion, in its first age of flourishing enthusiasm, spread the teaching of Gotama to all

the lands of southern and eastern Asia, even from Palestine, where they implanted the germs of the Western monastic system, to the far islands of the rising sun. Thus Buddhism became the greatest unifying force in eastern Asia, and no mind ne personality commands a wider and more sincere homage than he who found the light and pointed the way, the great teacher 'who never spake but good and wise words, he who was the light of the world.' So it is that also in more recent epochs down to our own day, his thought and life have been and are the chief centre of the common feel ings and enthusiasms of Asia. [See also BUDD HISM: Buddha and his mission.] The great ag: of illumination under the Sung dynasty in Chi saw the beginning of the attempts to merge an fuse Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian thought, Neo-Confucianism, called by Okakura 'a brilliant effort to mirror the whole of Asiatic consciousness It was Buddhist monks and missionaries who acted as messengers between China and Japan in that great formative period of a thousand years, in which all the currents of Indian and Chinese civilization made their impress upon Japanese national character. Then, under the Tokogawa régime the independent spirits of Japan trained themselves for the demands of an exacting epoch in the thought of Wang-yang-ming, or Oyomei, which combined with the noblest ideals and the deepest insight of Buddhism, joins to these a zest in active life, an ardent desire to participate in the surging development in which the universe and human destiny are unfolding themselves. In this school, which combines a truly poetic sentiment for the pathos of fading beauty and fleeting fragrance, for the ghostliness of an existence made up of countless vibrations of past joy and suffering, with the courageous desire to see clearly and act with energy, to share to the full in this great battle we call life,in this school were trained the statesmen and warriors of Satsuma and Choshu who have led Japan to greatness in peace and glory in war. [See also BUDDHISM: Later history; and Different forms of Buddhism.] The unity of Asiatic civilization has found an actual embodiment in the spirit of Japan There it is not the product of political reasoning, nor the discovery of philosophical abstraction. All the phenomena of the overpowering natural world of Asia are epitomized in the islands of the morning sun, where nature is as luxuriant and as forbidding, as caressing and as severe, as fertile and as destructive, as in all that cyclorama of storm. earthquake, typhoon, flood, and mountain vastness which we call Asia. Even thus has Japan in the course of her historic development received by gradual accretion the spirit of all Asiatic thought and endeavor. Nor have these waves from the mainland washed her shores in vain; her national life has not been the prey of capricious conquerors-imposing for a brief time a sway that would leave no permanent trace on the national life. Her mind and character have received and accepted these continental influences, as the needs of her own developing life have called for them; they have not been adopted perforce or by caprice, but have exerted a moulding influence and have beet assimilated into a consistent, deep, and powerfu national character. A psychological unity has thus been created-an actual expression of the flesh and blood of life-in touch with the national ideals and ambitions of a most truly patriotic race. This is a far different matter from the mere intellectual recognition of certain common beliefs, ideals, and institutions throughout the Orient. On such a perception of unity at most a certain intellectual sym pathy could be founded. But in Japan the Oriental spirit has become flesh-it has ceased to be a

bloodless generalization, and it now confronts the world in the shape of a nation conscious of the complicated and representative character of its psychology, and ardently enthusiastic over the loftiness of its mission. We know Japanese patriotism as national, inspired by loyalty to the Mikado and by love for the land of Fujiyama; we are also learning to know it as Asiatic-deeply starred by the exalting purpose of aiding that Asiatic thought-life which has made Japan to come to its own and preserve its dignity and independence through all the ages. . . . It is said that Asia is pessimistic. Yet her pessimism is not the sodden gloom of despair, whose terrifying scowl we encounter in European realistic art, and which is the bitter fruit of perverted modes of living. The pessimism of Asia, which makes the charm of her poetry from Firdusi to the writers of the delicate Japanese Haikai, is rather a soothing, quieting, sthetic influence, like the feeling of sadness that touches the heart at the sight of great beauty, and which perhaps is due to the memory of all the yearnings and renunciations in the experience of a long chain of lives. The pessimism of the Orient is tragic, rather than cynical, and Japan at the present time gives proof of the fact that the spirit of tragedy belongs to strong nations. . . . It is but a short time since the broader and more representative minds among the Asiatic races have begun to realize the unity of Asiatic civilization. The endless variety in speech and custom, the difference in character and temper between the Chinese and the Hindu, the opposite political destiny that has made one nation subject to foreigners while it has led another into an honored position among the independent Powers-all these differences can no longer obscure the deep unity of customs and of ideals that pervades the entire Orient. This unified character of Oriental life, in its essence so totally different from Western civilization, frequently expresses itself on the surface in customs and institutions which seem to us bizarre and even barbarous, and which invite the active reformer from the West to sweep them away and put in their place a more enlightened system. But whoever considers carefully the conditions of the Orient may arrive at a very different conclusion, and may see even in these apparently backward institutions the marks of a broad and noble ideal of life. The vastness of Oriental populations, the long duration of their institutions, create a feeling of permanence and peace. The frequency of natural catastrophes, the overpowering aspect of mountains, torrents, and typhoons, have given the Ori-. entals an entirely deferential attitude toward nature, which they have not tried to conquer or subdue. Busied rather with the causes of things and with the general laws of existence, they turned to religion and philosophy, and gave but little attention to practical facts, to scientific control of the lorces of nature, and to the betterment of social conditions. The pessimistic tinge of Oriental thought is due to this feeling of helplessness, which causes the world and existence to appear as a great procession of shadows, full of suffering and evil. But in all this impermanence, in the multitude of fleeting and ephemeral individual existences, the Oriental mind sees the manifestation of an omnipresent force."-P. S. Reinsch, Intellectual and political currents in the Far East, pp. 20-28.-See also CHINA: Origin of the people; MYTHOLOGY: Eastern Asia: Indian and Chinese influences.

Art of writing. See ALPHABET: Theories of origin and development.

Earliest history.-Movements of Asiatic races.-Invasions into Europe. "When we search into the remotest past of Asia, the geolo

gist, not the historian, presents a very surprising spectacle to our view: two lands stand opposite; one, to the north, shaping a long arch round what is to-day Irkutsk; the other, to the south, constitutes a portion of the future peninsula of Hindustan; a large mediterranean sea, to which M. Suess has given the name of Tethys, separates the two continents; this ocean, in gradually drying up, has by its folds given rise to the Pamirs, the Himalayas, the high Tibetan tableland-and its total disappearance and the union of the two, northern and southern, lands gave birth to Asia. If we seek in this vast continent for the territory having an authentic record of the oldest times, we find it in the lands of biblical tradition, Chaldea and Elam, where Asia tells again the story of its past with the most irrefragable evidence in the inscriptions registered on stones which, lying buried for centuries have withstood the wear and tear of ages; thus has been revealed to us the oldest code of the world, the Law of Hammurabi, discovered at Susa by M. J. de Morgan, and described by the Dominican Father V. Scheil, both Frenchmen. However, if Elam carries us back to a period further than four thousand years before Christ, other countries of Asia, including those which are supposed to possess the most ancient civilization, are far from giving the material proof of the high antiquity to which their books and their legends lay an unfounded claim. [See also BABYLONIA: Earliest inhabitants.] India cannot boast of a single monument which for age is to be compared with those of Nineveh and of Egypt, and before the eighth century B. C., no solid basis to the history of China is to be found. The perishable quality of the materials used in rearing the edifices of this last country cannot allow us to hope that the zeal of modern archæologists will unearth the secret of monuments vanished long ago. . . . At the pres'ent time [1904] nothing definite gives us a right to broach an opinion with regard to the primitive inhabitants of Oriental Asia and their cradle.

"... During a long time Europe remained in complete ignorance of the steady though irregular movements of the populations of Asia, which was really a volcano in eruption, the terrible effects of which were felt afar. When the Roman Empire crumbling to pieces was threatened westwards by the barbarians of Germanic race, Teutonic, Gothic, or Scandinavian,—these, pressed in their turn by the wild hordes from Asia, like a rolling wave invaded the Empire and, crushed in by the newcomers, founded as far as Spain, more or less flourishing kingdoms at the expense of the domain of the Caesars. The march of the Huns from the heart of Asia is in great part the cause of these migrations of people; menacing the Chinese territory, driving away the Yue-chi, a branch of the Eastern Tartars, who, after several halts of which we shall speak further on, carved for themselves an empire on the banks of the Indus at the cost of the occupiers of the valley of this river. The invading Huns, like a huge wave, gained gradually on from horde to horde, from tribe to tribe, from people to people, till they reached Europe which, when struck by the Scourge of God, could not discern whence the blow was first dealt. During the course of the fifth century, the Huns under Attila had not only subdued all the Tartar nations of Central Asia, but had also brought under the yoke the whole of the German tribes between the Volga and the Rhine. The defeat of the great chief by the allied armies of the Franks, the Visigoths, and the Romans at the battle of the Catalaunic Fields (451), his death two years later, stopped the tide of the Eastern invaders; as the victory of Charles Martel at Poitiers (732), three centuries later, set

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