Chapter 30

It matters not at what successive stage of man's developing life we may choose to look at him, the depth and height and breadth, in a word, the fullness and vigor and character of the inner and private life of the individual, will depend directly on the nature and development of the communal life. As the community expands, taking in new families or tribes or nations, reaching out to new regions, learning new industries, developing new ideas of man, of nature, of the gods, of duty, inventing new industries, discovering new truths, and developing a new language, all these fresh acquirements of the community become the possession of its individual members. In the growing complexity of society the individual unit, it is true, is increasingly lost among the millions of his fellow-units, yet all these successive steps serve to render his life the larger and richer. His horizon is no longer the little family group in which he was born; he now looks out over large and populous regions and feels the thrill of his growing life as he realizes the unity and community of his life and interests with those of his fellow-countrymen. His language is increasingly enriched; it serves to shape all his thinking and thus even the structure of his mind. His knowledge reaches far beyond his own experience; it includes not only that of the few persons whom he knows directly, but also that of unnumbered millions, remote in time and space. He increasingly discovers, though he never has analyzed, and is perhaps wholly unable to analyze, the discovery that he is not a thing among things; his life has a universal aspect. He lives more and more the universal life, subjecting the demands of the once domineering present to decisions of a cool judgment that looks back into the past and carefully weighs the interests of the future, temporal and eternal. Every advance made by the community is thus stored up to the credit of its individual members. So far, then, from the development of the communal principle consisting of and coming about through a limitation of the individual, it is exactly the reverse. Only as the individual develops are communal unity and progress possible. And on the other hand, only where the communal principle has reached its highest development, both extensively and intensively, do we find the most highly developed personality. The one is a necessary condition of the other. The deepest, blackest selfishness, even, can only come into existence where the communal principle has reached its highest development.

The preceding statement, however, is not equivalent to saying that when communalism and individualism arose in human consciousness they were both accepted as equally important. The reverse seems always to have been the case. As soon as the two principles are distinguished in thought, the communal is at once ranked as the higher, and the individual principle is scorned if not actually rejected. And the reason for this is manifest. From earliest times the constant foe which the community has had to fight and exterminate has been the wanton, selfish individual. Individualism of this type was the spontaneous contrast to the communal life, and was ever manifesting itself. No age or race has been without it, nor ignorant of it. As soon as the two principles became clearly contrasted in thought, therefore, because of his actual experience, man could conceive of individualism only as the antithesis to communalism; it was felt that the two were mutually destructive. It inevitably followed that communalism as a principle was accepted and individualism condemned. In their minds not only social order, but existence itself, was at stake. And they were right. Egoistic individualism is necessarily atomistic. No society can long maintain its life as a unified and peaceful society, when such a principle has been widely accepted by its members. The social ills of this and of every age largely arise from the presence of this type of men, who hold this principle of life.

If, therefore, after a fair degree of national unity has been attained, the higher stages of national evolution depend on the higher development of individualism, and if the only kind of individualism of which men can conceive is the egoistic, it becomes evident that further progress must cease. Stagnation, or degeneration, must follow. This is what has happened to nearly all the great nations and races of the world. They progressed well up to a certain point. Then they halted or fell back. The only possible condition under which a new lease of progressive life could be secured by them was a new variety of individualism, which would unite the opposite and apparently contradictory poles of communalism and egoism, namely, communo-individualism. Inconceivable though it be to those men and nations who have not experienced this type of life, it is nevertheless a fact, and a mighty factor in human and in national evolution. In its light we are able to see that the communal life itself has not reached its fullest development until the individualistic principle has been not only recognized in thought, but exalted, both in theory and in fact, to its true and coordinate position beside the communal principle. Only then does the nation become fully and completely organized. Only then does the national organism contain within itself the means for an endless, because a self-sustained, life.

It is important to guard against a misunderstanding of the principles just enunciated which may easily arise. In saying that the development of the individual has proceeded pari passu with that of the community, that every gain by the community has contributed directly to the development of the individual, I do not say that the communal profits are at once distributed among all the members of the group, or that the distribution is at all equal. Indeed, such is far from the case. Some few individuals seem to appropriate a large and unfair proportion of the communal bank account. So far as a people live a simple and relatively undifferentiated life, all sharing in much the same kind of pursuits, and enjoying much the same grade of life,--such as prevailed in a large measure in the earlier times, and decreasingly as society has become industrial,--and so far also as the new acquirements of thought are transformed into practical life and common language, all the members of the community share these acquirements in fairly equal measure. So far, however, as the communal profits consist of more or less abstract ideas, embodied in religious and philosophic thought, and stored away in books and literature accessible only to scholars, they are distributed very unequally. The more highly developed and consequently differentiated the society, the more difficult does distribution become. The very structure of the highly differentiated communal organism forbids the equal distribution of these goods. The literary and ruling minority have exclusive access to the treasures. The industrial majority are more and more rigidly excluded from them. Thus, although it is strictly true that every advance in the communal principle accrues to the benefit of the individual, it is not true that such advance necessarily accrues to the benefit of every individual, or equally to all individuals. In its lowest stages, developing communalism lifts all its individual members to about the same level of mental and moral acquirement. In its middle stages it develops all individuals to a certain degree, and certain individuals to a high degree. In its highest stages it develops among all its members a uniformly high grade of personal worth and acquirement.

Now the great problem on whose solution depends the possibility of continued communal evolution is, from this view-point, the problem of distributing the gains of the community to all its members more and more equally. It is the problem of giving to each human unit all the best and truest thought and character, all the highest and noblest ideals and motives, which the most advanced individuals have secured. If we stop to inquire minutely and analytically just what is the nature of the greatest attainments made by the community, we discover that it is not the possession of wealth in land or gold, it is not the accident of social rank, it is not any incident of temporal happiness or physical ease of life. It consists, on the contrary, in the discovery of the real nature of man. He is no mere animal, living in the realm of things and pleasures, limited by the now and the here. He is a person, a rational being. His thoughts and desires can only be expressed in terms of infinity. Nothing short of the infinite can satisfy either his reason or his heart Though living in nature and dependent on it, he is above it, and may and should understand it and rule it. His thoughts embrace all time and all being. In a very real sense he lives an infinite and eternal life, even here in this passing world.

The discovery of this set of facts, slowly emerging into consciousness, is the culmination of all past history, and the beginning of all man's higher life. It is the turning point in the history of the human race. Every onward step in man's preceding life, whereby he has united to form higher and higher groups, has been leading onward and upward to the development of strong personality, to the development of individuals competent to make this great discovery. But this is not enough.

The next step is to discover the fact, _and to believe it_, that this infinite life is the potential possession of every member of the community; that the bank account which the community has been storing up for ages is for the use not only of a favored few, but also of the masses. That since every man is a man, he has an infinite and an eternal life and value, which no accident of birth, or poverty, can annul. Each man needs to discover himself. The great problem, then, which confronts progressive communal evolution is to take this enlarged definition of the individual and scatter it broadcast over the land, persuading all men to accept and believe it both for themselves and for others. This definition must be carried in full confidence to the lowest, meanest, most ignorant man that lives in the community, and by its help this down-most man must be shown his birthright, and in the light of it he must be raised to actual manhood. He must "come to himself"; only so can he qualify for his heritage.

After a nation, therefore, has secured a large degree of unity, of the confederated tribal type, the step which must be taken, before it can proceed to more complete nationalization even, is, first, the discovery of personality as the real and essential characteristic of men, and secondly the discovery that high-grade personality may and can and must be developed in all the members of the community. In proportion as the members of the community become conscious persons, fully self-conscious and self-regulating, fully imbued with the idea and the spirit of true personality, of communo-individualism, in that proportion will the community be unified and centralized, as well as capable of the most complex and differentiated internal structure. The strength of such a nation will be indefinitely greater than that of any other less personalized and so less communalized nation.

XXX

ARE THE JAPANESE IMPERSONAL?

Few phases of the Japanese character have proved so fascinating to the philosophical writer on Japan as that of the personality of this Far Eastern people. From the writings of Sir Rutherford Alcock, the first resident English minister in Japan, down to the last publication that has come under my eye, all have something to say on this topic. One writer, Mr. Percival Lowell, has devoted an entire volume to it under the title of "The Soul of the Far East," in which he endeavors to establish the position that the entire civilization of the Orient, in its institutions, such as the family and the state, in the structure of its language, in its conceptions of nature, in its art, in its religion, and finally in its inherent mental nature, is essentially _impersonal_. One of the prominent and long resident missionaries in Japan once delivered a course of lectures on the influence of pantheism in the Orient, in which he contended, among other things, that the lack of personal pronouns and other phenomena of Japanese life and religion are due to the presence and power in this land of pantheistic philosophy preventing the development of personality.

The more I have examined these writings and their fundamental assumptions, the more manifest have ambiguities and contradictions in the use of terms become. I have become also increasingly impressed with the failure of advocates of Japanese "impersonality" to appreciate the real nature of the phenomena they seek to explain. They have not comprehended the nature or the course of social evolution, nor have they discovered the mutual relation existing between the social order and personality. The arguments advanced for the "impersonal" view are more or less plausible, and this method of interpreting the Orient appeals for authority to respectable philosophical writers. No less a philosopher than Hegel is committed to this interpretation. The importance of this subject, not only for a correct understanding of Japan, but also of the relation existing between individual, social, and religious evolution, requires us to give it careful attention. We shall make our way most easily into this difficult discussion by considering some prevalent misconceptions and defective arguments. I may here express my indebtedness to the author of "The Soul of the Far East" for the stimulus received from his brilliant volume, differ though I do from his main thesis. We begin this study with a few quotations from Mr. Lowell's now classic work.

"Capability to evolve anything is not one of the marked characteristics of the Far East. Indeed, the tendency to spontaneous variation, Nature's mode of making experiments, would seem there to have been an enterprising faculty that was early exhausted. Sleepy, no doubt, from having got up betimes with the dawn, these inhabitants of the land of the morning began to look upon their day as already far spent before they had reached its noon. They grew old young, and have remained much the same age ever since. What they were centuries ago, that at bottom they are to-day. Take away the European influences of the past twenty years, and each man might almost be his own great-grandfather. In race character, he is yet essentially the same. The traits that distinguished these peoples in the past have been gradually extinguishing them ever since. Of these traits, stagnating influences upon their career, perhaps the most important is the great quality of "impersonality."[CGa] "The peoples inhabiting it [the northern hemisphere] grow steadily more personal as we go West. So unmistakable is this gradation that we are almost tempted to ascribe it to cosmical rather than to human causes.... The sense of self grows more intense as we follow the wake of the setting sun, and fades steadily as we advance into the dawn. America, Europe, the Levant, India, Japan, each is less personal than the one before. We stand at the nearer end of the scale, the Far Orientals at the other. If with us the 'I' seems to be the very essence of the soul, then the soul of the Far East may be said to be 'Impersonality.'"[CH]

Following the argument through the volume we see that individual physical force and aggressiveness, deficiency of politeness, and selfishness are, according to this line of thought, essential elements of personality. The opposite set of qualities constitutes the essence of impersonality. "The average Far Oriental, indeed, talks as much to no purpose as his Western cousin, only in his chit-chat politeness takes the place of personalities. With him, self is suppressed, and an ever-present regard for others is substituted in its stead. A lack of personality is, as we have seen, the occasion of this courtesy; it is also its cause.... Considered a priori, the connection between the two is not far to seek. Impersonality, by lessening the interest in one's self, induces one to take an interest in others. Introspection tends to make a man a solitary animal, the absence of it a social one. The more impersonal the people, the more will the community supplant the individual in the popular estimation.... Then, as the social desires develop, politeness, being the means of their enjoyment, develops also."[CI]

Let us take a look at some definitions:

"Individuality, personality, and the sense of self, are only three aspects of the same thing. They are so many various views of the soul, according as we regard it from an intrinsic, an altruistic, or an egoistic standpoint.... By individuality we mean that bundle of ideas, thoughts, and day-dreams which constitute our separate identity, and by virtue of which we feel each one of us at home within himself.... Consciousness is the necessary attribute of mental action. Not only is it the sole way we have of knowing mind; without it there would be no mind to know. Not to be conscious of one's self is, mentally speaking, not to be. This complex entity, this little cosmos of a world, the 'I,' has for its very law of existence, self-consciousness, while personality is the effect it produces upon the consciousness of others."[CJ]

The more we study the above definitions, the more baffling they become. Try as I may, I have not been able to fit them, not only to the facts of my own experience, which may not be strange, but I cannot reconcile them even to each other. There seem to me inherent ambiguities and self-contradictions lurking beneath their scientific splendor. Individuality is stated to be "that bundle of ideas, thoughts, and day-dreams which constitute our separate identity." This seems plain and straightforward, but is it really so? Consciousness is stated to be not only "the necessary attribute of mental action" (to which exception might be taken on the ground of abundant proof of unconscious mental action), but it is also considered to be the very cause of mind itself. Not only by consciousness do we know mind, but the consciousness itself constitutes the mind; "without it there would be no mind to know." "Not to be conscious of one's self is not to be." Do we then cease to be, when we sleep? or when absorbed in thought or action? And do we become new-created when we awake? What is the bond of connection that binds into one the successive consciousnesses of the successive days? Does not that "bundle of ideas" become broken into as many wholly independent fragments as there are intervals between our sleepings? Or rather is not each fragment a whole in itself, and is not the idea of self-continuity from day to day and from week to week a self-delusion? How can it be otherwise if consciousness constitutes existence? For after the consciousness has ceased and "the bundle of ideas," which constitutes the individuality of that day, has therefore gone absolutely out of existence, it is impossible that the old bundle shall be resurrected by a new consciousness. Only a new bundle can be the product of a new consciousness. Evidently there is trouble somewhere. But let us pass on.

"The 'I' has for its very law of existence self-consciousness." Is not "self-consciousness" here identified with "consciousness" in the preceding sentence? The very existence of the mind, the "I," is ascribed to each in turn. Is there, then, no difference between consciousness and self-consciousness? Finally, personality is stated to be "the effect it [the "I"] produces on the self-consciousness of others." I confess I gain no clear idea from this statement. But whatever else it may mean, this is clear, that personality is not a quality or characteristic of the "I," but only some effect which the "I" produces on the consciousness of another. Is it a quality, then, of the other person? And does impersonality mean the lack of such an effect? But does not this introduce us to new confusion? When a human being is wholly absorbed in an altruistic act, for instance, wholly forgetful of self, he is, according to a preceding paragraph, quite impersonal; yet, according to the definition before us, he cannot be impersonal, for he is producing most lively effects on the consciousness of the poor human being he is befriending; in his altruistic deed he is strongly personal, yet not he, for personality does not belong to the person acting, but somehow to the person affected. How strange that the personality of a person is not his own characteristic but another's!

But still more confusing is the definition when we recall that if the benevolent man is wholly unconscious of self, and is thinking only of the one whom he is helping, then he himself is no longer existing. But in that case how can he help the poor man or even continue to think of him? Perfect altruism is self-annihilation! Knowledge of itself by the mind is that which constitutes it! But enough. It has become clear that these terms have not been used consistently, nor are the definitions such as to command the assent of any careful psychologist or philosopher. What the writer means to say is, I judge, that the measure of a man's personality is the amount of impression he makes on his fellows. For the whole drift of his argument is that both the physical and mental aggressiveness of the Occidental is far greater than that of the Oriental; this characteristic, he asserts, is due to the deficient development of personality in the Orient, and this deficient development he calls "impersonality." If those writers who describe the Orient as "impersonal" fail in their definition of the term "personal," their failure to define "impersonal" is even more striking. They use the term as if it were so well known as to need no definition; yet their usage ascribes to it contrary conceptions. As a rule they conceive of "impersonality" as a deficiency of development; yet, when they attempt to describe its nature, they speak of it as self-suppression. A clear statement of this latter point may be found in a passage already quoted: "Politeness takes the place of personalities. With him [the Oriental], self is suppressed, and an ever-present regard for others is substituted." "Impersonality, by lessening the interest in one's self, induces one to take interest in others." In this statement it will be noted the "_self is suppressed_." Does "impersonality" then follow personality, as a matter of historical development? It would so appear from this and kindred passages. But if this is true, then Japan is _more_ instead of less developed than the Occident. Yet this is exactly the reverse of that for which this school of thought contends.

Let us now examine some concrete illustrations adduced by those who advocate Japanese impersonality. They may be arranged in two classes: those that are due wholly to invention, and those that are doubtless facts, but that may be better accounted for by some other theory than that of "impersonality."