Chapter 2

The problem stated--Definitions--Remarks on definitions--Characteristics of a person--Impersonality defined--A preliminary summary statement--Definitions of Communalism and Individualism--The argument for "impersonality" from Japanese politeness--Some difficulties of this interpretation--The sociological interpretation of politeness--The significance of Japanese sensitiveness--Altruism as a proof of impersonality--Japanese selfishness and self-assertiveness--Distinction between communal and individualistic altruism--Deficiency of personal pronouns as a proof of impersonality--A possible counter-argument--Substitutes for personal pronouns--Many personal words in Japanese--Origin of pronouns, personal and others--The relation of the social order to the use of personal pronouns--Japanese conceive Nationality only through Personality--"Strong" and "weak" personality--Strong personalities in Japan--Feudalism and strong personalities, 356

XXXII. IS BUDDHISM IMPERSONAL?

Self-suppression as a proof of impersonality--Self-suppression cannot be ascribed to a primitive people--Esoteric Buddhism not popular--Buddhism emphasized introspection and self-consciousness--Mr. Lowell on the teaching of Buddha--Consciousness of union with the Absolute a developed, not a primitive, trait--Buddhist self-suppression proves a developed self--Buddhist self-salvation and Christian salvation by faith--Buddhism does not develop rounded personality--Buddhism attributes no worth to the self--Buddhist mercy rests on the doctrine of transmigration, not on the inherent worth of man--Analysis of the diverse elements in the asserted "Impersonality "--Why Buddhism attributed no value to the self--The Infinite Absolute Abstraction--Buddhism not impersonal but abstract--Buddhist doctrine of illusion--Popular Buddhism not philosophical--Relation of "ingwa," Fate, to the development of personality--Relation of belief in freedom to the fact of freedom--Sociological consequences of Buddhist doctrine, 377

XXXIII. TRACES OF PERSONALITY IN SHINTOISM, BUDDHISM, AND CONFUCIANISM

Human illogicalness providential--Some devices for avoiding the evils of logical conclusions--Buddhistic actual appeal to personal self-activity--Practical Confucianism an antidote to Buddhist poison--Confucian ethics produced strong persons--The personal conception of deity is widespread--Shinto gods all persons--Popular Buddhist gods are personal--Confucian "Heaven" implies personality--The idea of personality not wholly wanting in the Orient--The idea of divine personality not difficult to impart to a Japanese--A conversation with a Buddhist priest--Sketch of the development of Japanese personality--Is personality inherent?--Intrinsic and phenomenal personality--Note on the doctrine of the personality of God, 389

XXXIV. THE BUDDHIST WORLD-VIEW

Comparison of Buddhist, Greek, and Christian conceptions of God--Nirvana--The Buddhistic Ultimate Reality absolute vacuity--Greek affirmation of intelligence in the Ultimate Reality--Christian affirmation of Divine Personality--The Buddhist universe is partly rational and ethical--The Greek universe is partly rational and ethical--Corresponding views of sin, salvation, change, and history--Resulting pessimism and optimism--Consequences to the respective civilizations and their social orders, 398

XXXV. COMMUNAL AND INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS IN THE EVOLUTION OF JAPANESE RELIGIOUS LIFE

Japanese religious life has been predominantly communal--Shinto provided the sanctions for the social order--Recent abdication of Shinto as a religion--Primitive Shinto world--view--Shinto and modern science--Shinto sanctions for the modern social order--Buddhism is individualistic--Lacks social ideals and sanctions--Hence it could not displace Shinto--Shinto and Buddhism are supplementary--Produced a period of prosperity--The defect of Buddhist individualism--Imperfect acceptance of Shinto--Effect of political history--Confucianism restored the waning communal sanctions--The difference between Shinto and Confucian social ideals and sanctions--The difference between Shinto and Confucian world-views--Rejection of the Confucian social order--An interpretation--The failure of Confucianism to become a religion--Western intercourse re-established Shinto sanctions--Japan's modern religious problem--Difficulty of combining individual and communal religious elements--Christianity has accomplished it--Individualism in and through communalism--A modern expansion of communal religion--Shared by Japan--Some Japanese recognize the need of religion for Japan--Sociological function of individualistic religion in the higher human evolution--Obstacle to evolution through the development of intellect--The Japanese mind is outgrowing its old religious conceptions--The dependence of religious phenomena on the ideas dominating society--Note on National and Universal religions--Buddhism not properly classified as Universal--The classification of religions, 404

XXXVI. WHAT ARE THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ORIENT

The conclusion reached in this work--Contrary to the opinion of tourists, residents, and many sociologists--Professor Le Bon quoted--Social psychic characteristics not inherent--Evolution and involution--Advocates of inherent Oriental traits should catalogue those traits--An attempt by the London _Daily Mail_--Is the East inherently intuitive, and the West logical?--The difficulty of becoming mutually acquainted--The secret of genuine acquaintance--Is the East inherently meditative and the West active?--Oriental unity and characteristics are social, not inherent--Isolated evolution is divergent--Mutual influence of the East and the West--Summary statement, 422

XXXVII. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

Review of our course of thought--Purpose of this chapter--The problem studied in this work--Interrelation of social and psychic phenomena--Heredity defined and analyzed--Evolution defined--Exact definition of our question, and our reply--What would be an adequate disproof of our position--Reasons for limiting the discussion to advanced races--Divergent evolution dependent on segregation--Distinction between racial and social unity--Relation of the individual psychic character to the social order--"Race soul" a convenient fiction--Psychic function produces psychic organism--Causes and nature of plasticity and fixity of society--Relation of incarnate ideas to character and destiny--Valuelessness of "floating" ideas--Progress is at once communal and individual--Personality is its cause, aim, and criterion--Progress in personality is ethico-religious--Japanese social and psychic evolution not exceptional, 438

INTRODUCTION

The tragedy enacted in China during the closing year of the nineteenth century marks an epoch in the history of China and of the world. Two world-views, two types of civilization met in deadly conflict, and the inherent weakness of isolated, belated, superstitious and corrupt paganism was revealed. Moreover, during this, China's crisis, Japan for the first time stepped out upon the world's stage of political and military activity. She was recognized as a civilized nation, worthy to share with the great nations of the earth the responsibility of ruling the lawless and backward races.

The correctness of any interpretation as to the significance of this conflict between the opposing civilizations turns, ultimately, on the question as to what is the real nature of man and of society. If it be true, as maintained by Prof. Le Bon and his school, that the mental and moral character of a people is as fixed as its physiological characteristics, then the conflict in China is at bottom a conflict of races, not of civilizations.

The inadequacy of the physiological theory of national character may be seen almost at a glance by a look at Japan. Were an Oriental necessarily and unchangeably Oriental, it would have been impossible for Japan to have come into such close and sympathetic touch with the West.

The conflict of the East with the West, however, is not an inherent and unending conflict, because it is not racial, but civilizational. It is a conflict of world-views and systems of thought and life. It is a conflict of heathen and Christian civilizations. And the conflict will come to an end as soon as, and in proportion as, China awakes from her blindness and begins to build her national temple on the bedrock of universal truth and righteousness. The conflict is practically over in Japan because she has done this. In loyally accepting science, popular education, and the rights of every individual to equal protection by the government, Japan has accepted the fundamental conceptions of civilization held in the West, and has thus become an integral part of Christendom, a fact of world-wide significance. It proves that the most important differences now separating the great races of men are civilizational, not physiological. It also proves that European, American, and Oriental peoples may be possessed by the same great ideals of life and principles of action, enabling them to co-operate as nations in great movements to their mutual advantage.

While even we of the West may be long in learning the full significance of what has been and still is taking place in Japan and more conspicuously just now, because more tragically, in China, one thing is clear: steam and electricity have abolished forever the old isolation of the nations.

Separated branches of the human race that for thousands of years have been undergoing divergent evolution, producing radically different languages, customs, civilizations, systems of thought and world-views, and have resulted even in marked physiological and psychological differences, are now being brought into close contact and inevitable conflict. But at bottom it is a conflict of ideas, not of races. The age of isolation and divergent evolution is passing away, and that of international association and convergent social evolution has begun. Those races and nations that refuse to recognize the new social order, and oppose the cosmic process and its forces, will surely be pushed to the wall and cease to exist as independent nations, just as, in ancient times, the tribes that refused to unite with neighboring tribes were finally subjugated by those that did so unite.

Universal economic, political, intellectual, moral, and religious intercourse is the characteristic of the new æon on which we are entering. What are to be the final consequences of this wide intercourse? Can a people change its character? Can a nation fully possessed by one type of civilization reject it, and adopt one radically different? Do races have "souls" which are fixed and incapable of radical transformations? What has taken place in Japan, a profound, or only a superficial change in psychical character? Are the destinies of the Oriental races already unalterably determined?

The answers to these questions have already been suggested in the preceding paragraphs, in regard to what has already taken place in Japan. But we may add that that answer really turns on our conception as to the nature of the characteristics separating the East from the West. In proportion as national character is reckoned to be biological, will it be considered fixed and the national destiny predetermined. In proportion as it is reckoned to be sociological, will it be considered alterable and the national destiny subject to new social forces. Now that the intercourse of widely different races has begun on a scale never before witnessed, it is highly important for us to know its probable consequences. For this we need to gain a clear idea of the nature both of the individual man and of society, of the relation of the social order to individual and to race character, and of the law regulating and the forces producing social evolution. Only thus can we forecast the probable course and consequences of the free social intercourse of widely divergent races.

It is the belief of the writer that few countries afford so clear an illustration of the principles involved in social evolution as Japan. Her development has been so rapid and so recent that some principles have become manifest that otherwise might easily have escaped notice. The importance of understanding Japan, because of the light her recent transformations throw on the subject of social evolution and of national character and also because of the conspicuous rôle to which she is destined as the natural leader of the Oriental races in their adoption of Occidental modes of life and thought, justifies a careful study of Japanese character. He who really understands Japan, has gained the magic key for unlocking the social mysteries of China and the entire East. But the Japanese people, with their institutions and their various characteristics, merit careful study also for their own sakes. For the Japanese constitute an exceedingly interesting and even a unique branch of the human race. Japan is neither a purgatory, as some would have it, nor a paradise, as others maintain, but a land full of individuals in an interesting stage of social evolution.

Current opinions concerning Japan, however, are as curious as they are contradictory. Sir Edwin Arnold says that the Japanese "Have the nature rather of birds or butterflies than of ordinary human beings." Says Mr. A.M. Knapp: "Japan is the one country in the world which does not disappoint ... It is unquestionably the unique nation of the globe, the land of dream and enchantment, the land which could hardly differ more from our own, were it located in another planet, its people not of this world." An "old resident," however, calls it "the land of disappointments." Few phenomena are more curious than the readiness with which a tourist or professional journalist, after a few days or weeks of sight-seeing and interviewing, makes up his mind in regard to the character of the people, unless it be the way in which certain others, who have resided in this land for a number of years, continue to live in their own dreamland. These two classes of writers have been the chief contributors of material for the omnivorous readers of the West.

It appears to not a few who have lived many years in this Far Eastern land, that the public has been fed with the dreams of poets or the snap-judgments of tourists instead of with the facts of actual experience. A recent editorial article in the _Japan Mail_, than whose editor few men have had a wider acquaintance with the Japanese people or language, contains the following paragraph:

"In the case of such writers as Sir Edwin Arnold and Mr. Lafcadio Hearn it is quite apparent that the logical faculty is in abeyance. Imagination reigns supreme. As poetic nights or outbursts, the works of these authors on Japan are delightful reading. But no one who has studied the Japanese in a deeper manner, by more intimate daily intercourse with all classes of the people than either of these writers pretends to have had, can possibly regard a large part of their description as anything more than pleasing fancy. Both have given rein to the poetic fancy and thus have, from a purely literary point of view, scored a success granted to few.... But as exponents of Japanese life and thought they are unreliable.... They have given form and beauty to much that never existed except in vague outline or in undeveloped germs in the Japanese mind. In doing this they have unavoidably been guilty of misrepresentation.... The Japanese nation of Arnold and Hearn is not the nation we have known for a quarter of a century, but a purely ideal one manufactured out of the author's brains. It is high time that this was pointed out. For while such works please a certain section of the English public, they do a great deal of harm among a section of the Japanese public, as could be easily shown in detail, did space allow."--_Japan Mail, May 7, 1898_.

But even more harmful to the reading public of England and America are the hastily formed yet, nevertheless, widely published opinions of tourists and newspaper correspondents. Could such writers realize the inevitable limitations under which they see and try to generalize, the world would be spared many crudities and exaggerations, not to say positive errors. The impression so common to-day that Japan's recent developments are anomalous, even contrary to the laws of national growth, is chiefly due to the superficial writings of hasty observers. Few of those who have dilated ecstatically on her recent growth have understood either the history or the genius of her people.

"To mention but one among many examples," says Prof. Chamberlain, "the ingenious Traveling Commissioner of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, Mr. Henry Norman, in his lively letters on Japan published nine or ten years ago, tells the story of Japanese education under the fetching title of 'A Nation at School'; but the impression left is that they have been their own schoolmasters. In another letter on 'Japan in Arms,' he discourses concerning 'The Japanese Military Re-organizers,' 'The Yokosuka dockyard,' and other matters, but omits to mention that the reorganizers were Frenchmen, and that the Yokosuka dockyard was also a French creation. Similarly, when treating of the development of the Japanese newspaper, he ignores the fact that it owed its origin to an Englishman, which surely, to a man whose object was reality, should have seemed an object worth recording. These letters, so full and apparently so frank, really so deceptive, are, as we have said, but one instance among many of the way in which popular writers on Japan travesty history by ignoring the part which foreigners have played. The reasons for this are not far to seek. A wonderful tale will please folks at a distance all the better if made more wonderful still. Japanese progress, traced to its causes and explained by references to the means employed, is not nearly such fascinating reading as when represented in the guise of a fairy creation, sprung from nothing, like Aladdin's palace."--"_Things Japanese," p. 116_.

But inter-racial misunderstanding is not, after all, so very strange. Few things are more difficult than to accommodate one's self in speech, in methods of life, and even in thought, to an alien people; so identifying one's deepest interest with theirs as really to understand them. The minds of most men are so possessed by notions acquired in childhood and youth as to be unable to see even the plainest facts at variance with those notions. He who comes to Japan possessed with the idea that it is a dreamland and that its old social order was free from defects, is blind to any important facts invalidating that conception; while he who is persuaded that Japan, being Oriental, is necessarily pagan at heart, however civilized in form, cannot easily be persuaded that there is anything praiseworthy in her old civilization, in her moral or religious life, or in any of her customs.

If France fails in important respects to understand England; and England, Germany; and Germany, its neighbors; if even England and America can so misunderstand one another as to be on the verge of war over the boundary dispute of an alien country, what hope is there that the Occident shall understand the Orient, or the Orient the Occident?

Though the difficulty seems insurmountable, I am persuaded that the most fruitful cause of racial misunderstandings and of defective descriptions both of the West by Orientals, and of the East by Occidentals, is a well-nigh universal misconception as to the nature of man, and of society, and consequently of the laws determining their development. In the East this error arises from and rests upon its polytheism, and the accompanying theories of special national creation and peculiar national sanctity. On these grounds alien races are pronounced necessarily inferior. China's scorn for foreigners is due to these ideas.

Although this pagan notion has been theoretically abandoned in the West, it still dominates the thought not only of the multitudes, but also of many who pride themselves on their high education and liberal sentiments. They bring to the support of their national or racial pride such modern sociological theories as lend themselves to this view. Evolution and the survival of the fittest, degeneration and the arrest of development, are appealed to as justifying the arrogance and domineering spirit of Western nations.

But the most subtle and scholarly doctrine appealed to in support of national pride is the biological conception of society. Popular writers assume that society is a biological organism and that the laws of its evolution are therefore biological. This assumption is not strange, for until recent times the most advanced professional sociologists have been dominated by the same misconception. Spencer, for example, makes sociology a branch of biology. More recent sociological writers, however, such as Professors Giddings and Fairbanks, have taken special pains to assert the essentially psychic character of society; they reject the biological conception, as inadequate to express the real nature of society. The biological conception, they insist, is nothing more than a comparison, useful for bringing out certain features of the social life and structure, but harmful if understood as their full statement. The laws of psychic activity and development differ as widely from those of biologic activity and development as these latter do from those that hold in the chemical world. If the laws which regulate psychic development and the progress of civilization were understood by popular writers on Japan, and if the recent progress of Japan had been stated in the terms of these laws, there would not have been so much mystification in the West in regard to this matter as there evidently has been. Japan would not have appeared to have "jumped out of her skin," or suddenly to have escaped from the heredity of her past millenniums of development. This wide misunderstanding of Japan, then, is not simply due to the fact that "Japanese progress, traced to its causes and explained by reference to the means employed, is not nearly such fascinating reading as when represented in the guise of a fairy creation," but it is also due to the still current popular view that the social organism is biological, and subject therefore to the laws of biological evolution. On this assumption, some hold that the progress of Japan, however it may appear, is really superficial, while others represent it as somehow having evaded the laws regulating the development of other races. A nation's character and characteristics are conceived to be the product of brain-structure; these can change only as brain structure changes. Brain is held to determine civilization, rather than civilization brain. Hampered by this defective view, popular writers inevitably describe Japan to the West in terms that necessarily misrepresent her, and that at the same time pander to Occidental pride and prejudice.