The cover illustration was created by the transcriber using an image from the text. The cover is placed in the publicdomain.
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.
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 thisvolume appear for the first time. Thelittle essays, or rather fantasies, formingthe second part of the book, deal with experiencesin two hemispheres; but their general title shouldexplain why they have been arranged independentlyof that fact. To any really scientific imagination,the curious analogy existing betweencertain teachings of evolutional psychology andcertain teachings of Eastern faith,—particularlythe Buddhist doctrine that all sense-life is Karma,and all substance only the phenomenal result ofacts and thoughts,—might have suggested somethingmuch more significant than my cluster ofRetrospectives. These are offered merely as intimationsof a truth incomparably less difficult torecognize than to define.
L. H.
Tōkyō, Japan,
February 15, 1898.