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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: stranger and enemy were synonymous terms, and their objects were
received in a corresponding spirit. In our present refined
civilization we hurl epithets instead of spears, and content
ourselves with branding as heterodox the opinions of another which
do not happen to coincide with our own. The instinct of
self-development naturally begets this self-sided view. We
insensibly find those persons congenial whose ideas resemble ours,
and gravitate to them, as leaves on a pond do to one another, nearer
and nearer till they touch. Is it likely, then, that in the most
important case of all the rule should suddenly cease to hold? Is it
to be presumed that even Socrates chose Xantippe for her remarkable
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