EXOTICS AND
RETROSPECTIVES
By LAFCADIO HEARN
LECTURER ON ENGLISH LITERATURE
IN THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY. TŌKYŌ
AUTHOR OF “OUT OF THE EAST,”
“GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN,” &c.
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BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1914
Copyright, 1898
By Little, Brown, and Co.
All rights reserved
Printers
S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
All but one of the papers composing this volume appear for the first time. The little essays, or rather fantasies, forming the second part of the book, deal with experiences in two hemispheres; but their general title should explain why they have been arranged independently of that fact. To any really scientific imagination, the curious analogy existing between certain teachings of evolutional psychology and certain teachings of Eastern faith,—particularly the Buddhist doctrine that all sense-life is Karma, and all substance only the phenomenal result of acts and thoughts,—might have suggested something much more significant than my cluster of Retrospectives. These are offered merely as intimations of a truth incomparably less difficult to recognize than to define.
L. H.
Tōkyō, Japan,
February 15, 1898.
