misunderstanding in regard to ourselves. Occidental peoples are
supposed to be what they are in civilization and to have reached their
high attainments in theoretical and applied science, in philosophy and
in practical politics, because of their unique brain-structures,
brains secured through millenniums of biological evolution. The
following statement may seem to be rank heresy to the average
sociologist, but my studies have led me to believe that the main
differences between the great races of mankind to-day are not due to
biological, but to social conditions; they are not
physico-psychological differences, but only socio-psychological
differences. The Anglo-Saxon is what he is because of his social
heredity, and the Chinaman is what he is because of his social
heredity. The profound difference between social and physiological
heredity and evolution is unappreciated except by a few of the most
recent sociological writers. The part that association, social
segregation, and social heredity take in the maintenance, not only of
once developed languages and civilizations, but even in their genesis,
has been generally overlooked.
But a still more important factor in the determination of social and
psychic evolution, generally unrecognized by sociologists, is the
nature and function of personality. Although in recent years it has
been occasionally mentioned by several eminent writers, personality as
a principle has not been made the core of any system of sociology. In
my judgment, however, this is the distinctive characteristic of human
evolution and of human association, and it should accordingly be the
fundamental principle of social science. Many writers on the East have
emphasized what they call its "impersonal" characteristics. So
important is this subject that I have considered it at length in the
body of this work.
Sociological phenomena cannot be fully expressed by any combination of
exclusively physical, biological, and psychic terms, for the
significant element of man and of society consists of something more
than these--namely, personality. It is this that differentiates human
from animal evolution. The unit of human sociology is a
self-conscious, self-determinative being. The causative factor in the
social evolution of man is his personality. The goal of that evolution
is developed personality. Personality is thus at once the cause and
the end of social progress. The conditions which affect or determine
progress are those which affect or determine personality.
The biological evolution of man from the animal has been, it is true,
frankly assumed in this work. No attempt is made to justify this
assumption. Let not the reader infer, however, that the writer
similarly assumes the adequacy of the so-called naturalistic or
evolutionary origin of ethics, of religion, or even of social
progress. It may be doubted whether Darwin, Wallace, Le Conte, or any
exponent of biological evolution has yet given a complete statement of
the factors of the physiological evolution of man. It is certain,
however, that ethical, religious, and social writers who have striven
to account for the higher evolution of man, by appealing to factors
exclusively parallel to those which have produced the physiological
evolution of man, have conspicuously failed. However much we may find
to praise in the social interpretations of such eminent writers as
Comte, Spencer, Ward, Fiske, Giddings, Kidd, Southerland, or even
Drummond, there still remains the necessity of a fuller consideration
of the moral and religious evolution of man. The higher evolution of
man cannot be adequately expressed or even understood in any terms
lower than those of personality.
EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE
I
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
Said a well educated and widely read Englishman to the writer while in
Oxford, "Can you explain to me how it is that the Japanese have
succeeded in jumping out of their skins?" And an equally thoughtful
American, speaking about the recent strides in civilization made by
Japan, urged that this progress could not be real and genuine. "How
can such a mushroom-growth, necessarily without deep roots in the
past, be real and strong and permanent? How can it escape being
chiefly superficial?" These two men are typical of much of the thought
of the West in regard to Japan.
Seldom, perhaps never, has the civilized world so suddenly and
completely reversed an estimate of a nation as it has that with
reference to Japan. Before the recent war, to the majority even of
fairly educated men, Japan was little more than a name for a few small
islands somewhere near China, whose people were peculiar and
interesting. To-day there is probably not a man, or woman, or child
attending school in any part of the civilized world, who does not know
the main facts about the recent war: how the small country and the men
of small stature, sarcastically described by their foes as "Wojen,"
pygmy, attacked the army and navy of a country ten times their size.
Such a universal change of opinion regarding a nation, especially
regarding one so remote from the centers of Western civilization as
Japan, could not have taken place in any previous generation. The
telegraph, the daily paper, the intelligent reporters and writers of
books and magazine articles, the rapid steam travel and the many
travelers--all these have made possible this sudden acquisition of
knowledge and startling reversal of opinion.
There is reason, however, to think that much misapprehension and real
ignorance still exists about Japan and her leap into power and
world-wide prestige. Many seem to think that Japan has entered on her
new career through the abandonment of her old civilization and the
adoption of one from the West--that the victories on sea and land, in
Korea, at Port Arthur, and a Wei-hai-wei, and more recently at
Tientsin and Pekin, were solely due to her Westernized navy and army.
Such persons freely admit that this process of Westernization had been
going on for many years more rapidly than the world at large knew, and
that consequently the reputation of Japan before the war was not such
as corresponded with her actual attainments. But they assume that
there was nothing of importance in the old civilization; that it was
little superior to organized barbarism.
These people conceive of the change which has taken place in Japan
during the past thirty years as a revolution, not as an evolution; as
an abandonment of the old, and an adoption of the new, civilization.
They conceive the old tree of civilization to have been cut down and
cast into the fire, and a new tree to have been imported from the West
and planted in Japanese soil. New Japan is, from this view-point, the
new tree.
Not many months ago I heard of a wealthy family in Kyoto which did not
take kindly to the so-called improvements imported from abroad, and
which consequently persisted in using the instruments of the older
civilization. Even such a convenience as the kerosene lamp, now
universally adopted throughout the land of the Rising Sun, this family
refused to admit into its home, preferring the old-style andon with
its vegetable oil, dim light, and flickering flame. Recently, however,
an electric-light company was organized in that city, and this
brilliant illuminant was introduced not only into the streets and
stores, but into many private houses. Shortly after its introduction,
the family was converted to the superiority of the new method of
illumination, and passed at one leap from the old-style lantern to the
latest product of the nineteenth century. This incident is considered
typical of the transformations characteristic of modern Japan. It is
supposed that New Japan is in no proper sense the legitimate product
through evolution of Old Japan.
In important ways, therefore, Japan seems to be contradicting our
theories of national growth. We have thought that no "heathen" nation
could possibly gain, much less wield, unaided by Westerners, the
forces of civilized Christendom. We have likewise held that national
growth is a slow process, a gradual evolution, extending over scores
and centuries of years. In both respects our theories seem to be at
fault. This "little nation of little people," which we have been so
ready to condemn as "heathen" and "uncivilized," and thus to despise,
or to ignore, has in a single generation leaped into the forefront of
the world's attention.
Are our theories wrong? Is Japan an exception? Are our facts correct?
We instinctively feel that something is at fault. We are not satisfied
with the usual explanation of the recent history of Japan. We are
perhaps ready to concede that "the rejection of the old and the
adoption of Western civilization" is the best statement whereby to
account for the new power of Japan and her new position among the
nations, but when we stop to think, we ask whether we have thus
explained that for which we are seeking an explanation? Do not the
questions still remain--Why did the Japanese so suddenly abandon
Oriental for Occidental civilization? And what mental and other traits
enabled a people who, according to the supposition, were far from
civilized, so suddenly to grasp and wield a civilization quite alien
in character and superior to their own; a civilization ripened after
millenniums of development of the Aryan race? And how far, as a matter
of fact, has this assimilation gone? Not until these questions are
really answered has the explanation been found, So that, after all,
the prime cause which we must seek is not to be found in the external
environment, but rather in the internal endowment.
An effort to understand the ancient history of Japan encounters the
same problem as that raised by her modern history. What mental
characteristics led the Japanese a thousand years ago so to absorb the
Chinese civilization, philosophy, and language that their own suffered
a permanent arrest? What religious traits led them so to take on a
religion from China and India that their own native religion never
passed beyond the most primitive development, either in doctrine, in
ethics, in ritual, or in organization? On the other hand, what mental
characteristics enabled them to preserve their national independence
and so to modify everything brought from abroad, from the words of the
new language to the philosophy of the new religions, that Japanese
civilization, language, and religion are markedly distinct from the
Chinese? Why is it that, though the Japanese so fell under the bondage
of the Chinese language as permanently to enslave and dwarf their own
beautiful tongue, expressing the dominant thought of every sentence
with characters (ideographs) borrowed from China, yet at the same time
so transformed what they borrowed that no Chinaman can read and
understand a Japanese book or newspaper?
The same questions recur at this new period of Japan's national life.
Why has she so easily turned from the customs of centuries? What are
the mental traits that have made her respond so differently from her
neighbor to the environment of the nineteenth-century civilization of
the West Why is it that Japan has sent thousands of her students to
these Western lands to see and study and bring back all that is good
in them, while China has remained in stolid self-satisfaction, seeing
nothing good in the West and its ways? To affirm that the difference
is due to the environment alone is impossible, for the environment
seems to be essentially the same. This difference of attitude and
action must be traced, it would seem, to differences of mental and
temperamental characteristics. Those who seek to understand the
secret of Japan's newly won power and reputation by looking simply at
her newly acquired forms of government, her reconstructed national
social structure, her recently constructed roads and railroads,
telegraphs, representative government, etc., and especially at her
army and navy organized on European models and armed with European
weapons, are not unlike those who would discover the secret of human
life by the study of anatomy.
This external view and this method of interpretation are, therefore,
fundamentally erroneous. Never, perhaps, has the progress of a nation
been so manifestly an evolution as distinguished from a revolution. No
foreign conquerors have come in with their armies, crushing down the
old and building up a new civilization. No magician's wand has been
waved over the land to make the people forget the traditions of a
thousand years and fall in with those of the new régime. No rite or
incantation has been performed to charm the marvelous tree of
civilization and cause it to take root and grow to such lofty
proportions in an unprepared soil.
In contrast to the defective views outlined above, one need not
hesitate to believe that the actual process by which Old Japan has
been transformed into New Japan is perfectly natural and necessary. It
has been a continuous growth; it is not the mere accumulation of
external additions; it does not consist alone of the acquisition of
the machinery and the institutions of the Occident. It is rather a
development from within, based upon already existing ideas and
institutions. New Japan is the consequence of her old endowment and
her new environment. Her evolution has been in progress and can be
traced for at least a millennium and a half, during which she has been
preparing for this latest step. All that was necessary for its
accomplishment was the new environment. The correctness of this view
and the reasons for it will appear as we proceed in our study of
Japanese characteristics. But we need to note at this point the
danger, into which many fall, of ascribing to Japan an attainment of
western civilization which the facts will not warrant. She has
secured much, but by no means all, that the West has to give.
We may suggest our line of thought by asking what is the fundamental
element of civilization? Does it consist in the manifold appliances
that render life luxurious; the railroad, the telegraph, the post
office, the manufactures, the infinite variety of mechanical and other
conveniences? Or is it not rather the social and intellectual and
ethical state of a people? Manifestly the latter. The tools indeed of
civilization may be imported into a half-civilized, or barbarous
country; such importation, however, does not render the country
civilized, although it may assist greatly in the attainment of that
result. Civilization being mental, social, and ethical, can arise only
through the growth of the mind and character of the vast multitudes of
a nation. Now has Japan imported only the tools of civilization? In
other words, is her new civilization only external, formal, nominal,
unreal? That she has imported much is true. Yet that her attainments
and progress rest on her social, intellectual, and ethical development
will become increasingly clear as we take up our successive chapters.
Under the new environment of the past fifty years, this growth,
particularly in intellectual, in industrial, and in political lines,
has been exceedingly rapid as compared with the growths of other
peoples.
This conception of the rise of New Japan will doubtless approve itself
to every educated man who will allow his thought to rest upon the
subject. For all human progress, all organic evolution, proceeds by
the progressive modification of the old organs under new conditions.
The modern locomotive did not spring complete from the mind of James
Watt; it is the result of thousands of years of human experience and
consequent evolution, beginning first perhaps with a rolling log,
becoming a rude cart, and being gradually transformed by successive
inventions until it has become one of the marvels of the nineteenth
century. It is impossible for those who have attained the view-point
of modern science to conceive of discontinuous progress; of
continually rising types of being, of thought, or of moral life, in
which the higher does not find its ground and root and thus an
important part of its explanation, in the lower. Such is the case not
only with reference: to biological evolution; it is especially true of
social evolution. He who would understand the Japan of to-day cannot
rest with the bare statement that her adoption of the tools and
materials of Western civilization has given her her present power and
place among the nations. The student with historical insight knows
that it is impossible for one nation, off-hand, without preparation,
to "adopt the civilization" of another.
The study of the evolution of Japan is one of unusual interest; first,
because of the fact that Japan has experienced such unique changes in
her environment. Her history brings into clear light some principles
of evolution which the visual development of a people does not make so
clear.
In the second place, New Japan is in a state of rapid growth. She is
in a critical period, resembling a youth, just coming to manhood, when
all the powers of growth are most vigorous. The latent qualities of
body and mind and heart then burst forth with peculiar force. In the
course of four or five short years the green boy develops into a
refined and noble man; the thoughtless girl ripens into the full
maturity of womanhood and of motherhood. These are the years of
special interest to those who would observe nature in her time of most
critical activity.
Not otherwise is it in the life of nations. There are times when their
growth is phenomenally rapid; when their latent qualities are
developed; when their growth can be watched with special ease and
delight, because so rapid. The Renaissance was such a period in
Europe. Modern art, science, and philosophy took their start with the
awakening of the mind of Europe at that eventful and epochal period of
her life. Such, I take it, is the condition of Japan to-day. She is
"being born again"; undergoing her "renaissance." Her intellect,
hitherto largely dormant, is but now awaking. Her ambition is equaled
only by her self-reliance. Her self-confidence and amazing
expectations have not yet been sobered by hard experience. Neither
does she, nor do her critics, know how much she can or cannot do. She
is in the first flush of her new-found powers; powers of mind and
spirit, as well as of physical force. Her dreams are gorgeous with all
the colors of the rainbow. Her efforts are sure, to be noble in
proportion as her ambitions are high. The growth of the past
half-century is only the beginning of what we may expect to see.
Then again, this latest and greatest step in the evolution of Japan
has taken place at a time unparalleled for opportunities of
observation, under the incandescent light of the nineteenth century,
with its thousands of educated men to observe and record the facts,
many of whom are active agents in the evolution in progress. Hundreds
of papers and magazines, native and European, read by tens of
thousands of intelligent men and women, have kept the world aware of
the daily and hourly events. Telegraphic dispatches and letters by the
million have passed between the far East and the West. It would seem
as if the modernizing of Japan had been providentially delayed until
the last half of the nineteenth century with its steam and
electricity, annihilators of space and time, in order that her
evolution might be studied with a minuteness impossible in any
previous age, or by any previous generation. It is almost as if one
were conducting an experiment in human evolution in his own
laboratory, imposing the conditions and noting the results.
For still another reason is the evolution of New Japan of special
interest to all intelligent persons. To illustrate great things by
small, and human by physical, no one who has visited Geneva has failed
to see the beautiful mingling of the Arve and the Rhone. The latter
flowing from the calm Geneva lake is of delicate blue, pure and
limpid. The former, running direct from the glaciers of Mont Blanc and
the roaring bed of Chamouni, bears along in its rushing waters
powdered rocks and loosened soil. These rivers, though joined in one
bed, for hundreds of rods are quite distinct; the one, turbid; the
other, clear as crystal; yet they press each against the other, now a
little of the Rhone's clear current forces its way into the Arve, soon
to be carried off, absorbed and discolored by the mass of muddy water
around it. Now a little of the turbid Arve forces its way into the
clear blue Rhone, to lose there its identity in the surrounding
waters. The interchange goes on, increasing with the distance until,
miles below, the two-rivers mingle as one. No longer is it the Arve or
the old Rhone, but the new Rhone.
In Japan there is going on to-day a process unique in the history of
the human race. Two streams of civilization, that of the far East and
that of the far West, are beginning to flow in a single channel. These
streams are exceedingly diverse, in social structure, in government,
in moral ideals and standards, in religion, in psychological and
metaphysical conceptions. Can they live together? Or is one going to
drive out and annihilate the other? If so, which will be victor? Or is
there to be modification of both? In other words, is there to be a new
civilization--a Japanese, an Occidento-Oriental civilization?
The answer is plain to him who has eyes with which to see. Can the
Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? No more can Japan
lose all trace of inherited customs of daily life, of habits of
thought and language, products of a thousand years of training in
Chinese literature, Buddhist doctrine, and Confucian ethics. That "the
boy is father to the man" is true of a nation no less than of an
individual. What a youth has been at home in his habits of thought, in
his purpose and spirit and in their manifestation in action, will
largely determine his after-life. In like manner the mental and moral
history of Japan has so stamped certain characteristics on her
language, on her thought, and above all on her temperament and
character, that, however she may strive to Westernize herself, it is
impossible for her to obliterate her Oriental features. She will
inevitably and always remain Japanese.
Japan has already produced an Occidento-Oriental civilization. Time
will serve progressively to Occidentalize it. But there is no reason
for thinking that it will ever become wholly Occidentalized. A
Westerner visiting Japan will always be impressed with its Oriental
features, while an Asiatic will be impressed with its Occidental
features. This progressive Occidentalization of Japan will take place
according to the laws of social evolution, of which we must speak
somewhat more fully in a later chapter.
An important question bearing on this problem is the precise nature of
the characteristics differentiating the Occident and the Orient. What
exactly do we mean when we say that the Japanese are Oriental and will
always bear the marks of the Orient in their civilization, however
much they may absorb from the West? The importance and difficulty of
this question have led the writer to defer its consideration till
toward the close of this work.
If one would gain adequate conception of the process now going on, the
illustration already used of the mingling of two rivers needs to be
supplemented by another, corresponding to a separate class of facts.
Instead of the mingling of rivers, let us watch the confluence of two
glaciers. What pressures! What grindings! What upheavals! What
rendings! Such is the mingling of two civilizations. It is not smooth
and Noiseless, but attended with pressure and pain. It is a collision
in more ways than one. The unfortunates on whom the pressures of both
currents are directed are often quite destroyed.