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Another argument to the same end is derived from their different modes of life, as for instance in eating, drinking, sleeping, dressing, shaving the head, saluting, sitting, and many other customs. The characters of the two nations are, he considers, essentially distinct, the Chinese being modest and lovers of a sedate, speculative, philosophical mode of life, though given to fraud and usury, whilst the Japanese are warlike, dissolute, mistrustful, ambitions, and always bent on high designs.
The arguments employed by Dr. Kaempfer to prove that the Japanese are not of Chinese descent are at least philosophical if they are not conclusive; but when the learned author, not contented with proving, or endeavouring to prove, from whom the Japanese are not descended, proceeds to tell us what their origin is, what at the present day shall be said of the arguments which he employs in support of his theory? The Japanese, he asserts, are clearly an original nation, at least they are not descended from the Chinese. Whence then, he asks, is their descent? “Perhaps it is not inconsistent with reason and the nature of things to assert (p. 86) that they—the Japanese—are descended of the first inhabitants of Babylon, (such is the word he uses, meaning presumably Babel), and that the Japanese language is one of those which sacred writs mention that all-wise Providence thought fit to infuse into the minds of the vain builders of the Babylonian Tower.” On this conjecture, in support of which he does not even attempt to bring forward any argument whatsoever, Dr. Kaempfer proceeds to raise a further theory, his sole argument in favor of which seems to be of itself destructive of his theory. In view of the purity of the Japanese language and of the fact of its not affording the slightest trace of possessing any words belonging to the languages of the countries through which the author supposes the original Japanese to have passed on their way from the banks of the Euphrates to the Corean sea, he comes to the conclusion not that they never passed through those countries at all, which would seem to be the natural conclusion, but that they came through them as it were at
