miserable. There was doubtless much happiness and even family joy;
affection between husband and wife could assuredly have been found in
numberless cases. But the hardness of life as a whole, the low
position held by woman in her relations to man, her lack of legal
rights,[D] and her menial position, justify the assertion that there
was much room for improvement.
These three conspicuous features of the older life in Japan help us to
reach a clear conception as to what constitutes progress. We may say
that true progress consists in that continuous, though slow,
transformation of the structure of society which, while securing its
more thorough organization, brings to each individual the opportunity
of a larger, richer, and fuller life, a life which increasingly calls
forth his latent powers and capacities. In other words, progress is a
growing organization of society, accompanied by a growing liberty of
the individual resulting in richness and fullness of life. It is not
primarily a question of unreflecting happiness, but a question of the
wide development of manhood and womanhood. Both men and women have as
yet unmeasured latent capacities, which demand a certain liberty,
accompanied by responsibilities and cares, in order for their
development. Intellectual education and a wide horizon are likewise
essential to the production of such manhood and womanhood. In the long
run this is seen to bring a deeper and a more lasting happiness than
was possible to the undeveloped man or woman.
The question of progress is confused and put on a wrong footing when
the consciousness of happiness or unhappiness, is made the primary
test. The happiness of the child is quite apart from that of the
adult. Regardless of distressing circumstances, the child is able to
laugh and play, and this because he is a child; a child in his
ignorance of actual life, and in his inability to perceive the true
conditions in which he lives. Not otherwise, I take it, was the
happiness of the vast majority in Old Japan. Theirs was the happiness
of ignorance and simple, undeveloped lives. Accustomed to tyranny,
they did not think of rebellion against it. Familiar with brutality
and suffering, they felt nothing of its shame and inhumanity. The
sight of decapitated bodies, the torture of criminals, the despotism
of husbands, the cringing obedience of the ruled, the haughtiness of
the rulers, the life of hard toil and narrow outlook, were all so
usual that no thought of escape from such an order of society ever
suggested itself to those who endured it.
From time to time wise and just rulers did indeed strive to introduce
principles of righteousness into their methods of government; but
these men formed the exception, not the rule. They were individuals
and not the system under which the people lived. It was always a
matter of chance whether or not such men were at the head of affairs,
for the people did not dream of the possibility of having any voice in
their selection. The structure of society was and always had been
absolute militarism. Even under the most benevolent rulers the use of
cruel torture, not only on convicted criminals, but on all suspected
of crime, was customary. Those in authority might personally set a
good example, but they did not modify the system. They owned not only
the soil but practically the laborers also, for these could not leave
their homes in search of others that were better. They were serfs, if
not slaves, and the system did not tend to raise the standard of life
or education, of manhood or womanhood among the people. The happiness
of the people in such times was due in part to their essential
inhumanity of heart and lack of sympathy with suffering and sorrow.
Each individual bore his own sorrow and pain alone. The community, as
such, did not distress itself over individuals who suffered. Sympathy,
in its full meaning, was unknown in Old Japan. The barbarous custom of
casting out the leper from the home, to wander a lonely exile, living
on the charity of strangers, is not unknown even to this day. We are
told that in past times the "people were governed by such strong
aversion to the sight of sickness that travelers were often left to
die by the roadside from thirst, hunger, or disease; and householders
even went the length of thrusting out of doors and abandoning to utter
destitution servants who suffered from chronic maladies." So universal
was this heartlessness that the government at one time issued
proclamations against the practices it allowed. "Whenever an epidemic
occurred the number of deaths was enormous." Seven men of the outcast,
"the Eta," class were authoritatively declared equal in value to one
common man. Beggars were technically called "hi-nin," "not men."
Those who descant on the happiness of Old Japan commit the great error
of overlooking all these sad features of life, and of fixing their
attention exclusively on the one feature of the childlike, not to say
childish, lightness of heart of the common people. Such writers are
thus led to pronounce the past better than the present time. They also
overlook the profound happiness and widespread prosperity of the
present era. Trade, commerce, manufactures, travel, the freest of
intercommunication, newspapers, and international relations, have
brought into life a richness and a fullness that were then unknown.
But in addition, the people now enjoy a security of personal
interests, a possession of personal rights and property, and a
personal liberty, that make life far more worthy and profoundly
enjoyable, even while they bring responsibilities and duties and not a
few anxieties. This explains the fact that no Japanese has expressed
to me the slightest desire to abandon the present and return to the
life and conditions of Old Japan.
Let me repeat, therefore, with all possible emphasis, that the problem
of progress is not primarily one of increasing light-heartedness, pure
and simple, nor yet a problem of racial unification or of political
centralization; it is rather a problem of so developing the structure
of society that the individual may have the fullest opportunity for
development.
The measure of progress is not the degree of racial unification, of
political centralization, or of unreflective happiness, but rather the
degree and the extent of individual personality. Racial unification,
political centralization, and increasing happiness are in the
attainment of progress, but they are not to be viewed as sufficient
ends. Personality, can alone be that end. The wide development of
personality, therefore, is at once the goal and the criterion of
progress.
IV
THE METHOD OF PROGRESS
Progress as an ideal is quite modern in its origin. For although the
ancients were progressing, they did it unconsciously, blindly,
stumbling on it by chance, forced to it, as we have seen, by the
struggle for existence. True of the ancient civilizations of Europe
and Western Asia and Africa, this is emphatically true of the Orient.
Here, so far from seeking to progress, the avowed aim has been not to
progress; the set purpose has been to do as the fathers did; to follow
their example even in customs and rites whose meaning has been lost in
the obscurity of the past. This blind adherence was the boast of those
who called themselves religious. They strove to fulfill their duties
to their ancestors.
Under such conditions how was progress possible? And how has it come
to pass that, ruled by this ideal until less than fifty years ago,
Japan is now facing quite the other way? The passion of the nation
to-day is to make the greatest possible progress in every direction.
Here is an anomaly, a paradox; progress made in spite of its
rejection; and, recently, a total volte-face. How shall we explain
this paradox?
In our chapter on the Principles of National Evolution,[E] we see that
the first step in progress was made through the development of
enlarging communities by means of extending boundaries and hardening
customs. We see that, on reaching this stage, the great problem was so
to break the "cake of custom" as to give liberty to individuals
whereby to secure the needful variations. We do not consider how this
was to be accomplished. We merely show that, if further progress was
to be made, it could only be through the development of the
individualistic principle to which we give the more exact name
communo-individualism. This problem as to how the "cake of custom" is
successfully broken must now engage our attention.
Mr. Bagehot contends that this process consisted, as a matter of
history, in the establishment of government by discussion. Matters of
principle came to be talked over; the desirability of this or that
measure was submitted to the people for their approval or disapproval.
This method served to stimulate definite and practical thought on a
wide scale; it substituted the thinking of the many for the thinking
of the few; it stimulated independent thinking and consequently
independent action. This is, however, but another way of saying that
it stimulated variation. A government whose action was determined
after wide discussion would be peculiarly fitted to take advantage of
all useful variations of ideas and practice. Experience shows, he
continues, that the difficulty of developing a "cake of custom" is far
more easily surmounted than that of developing government by
discussion; _i.e._, that it is far less difficult to develop
communalism than communo-individualism. The family of arrested
civilizations, of which China and India and Japan, until recent times,
are examples, were caught in the net of what had once been the source
of their progress. The tyranny of their laws and customs was such that
all individual variations were nipped in the bud. They failed to
progress because they failed to develop variations. And they failed in
this because they did not have government by discussion.
No one will dispute the importance of Mr. Bagehot's, contribution to
this subject. But it may be doubted whether he has pointed out the
full reason for the difficulty of breaking the "cake of custom" or
manifested the real root of progress. To attain progress in the full
sense, not merely of an oligarchy or a caste, but of the whole people,
there must not only be government by discussion, but the
responsibilities of the government must be snared more or less fully
by all the governed.
History, however, shows that this cannot take place until a
conception of intrinsic manhood and womanhood has arisen, a conception
which emphasizes their infinite and inherent worth. This conception is
not produced by government by discussion, while government by
discussion is the necessary consequence of the wide acceptance of this
conception. It is therefore the real root of progress.
As I look over the history of the Orient, I find no tendency to
discover the inherent worth of man or to introduce the principle of
government by discussion. Left to themselves, I see no probability
that any of these nations would ever have been able to break the
thrall of their customs, and to reach that stage of development in
which common individuals could be trusted with a large measure of
individual liberty. Though I can conceive that Japan might have
secured a thorough-going political centralization under the old
_régime_, I cannot see that that centralization would have been
accompanied by growing liberty for the individual or by such
constitutional rights for the common man as he enjoys to-day. Whatever
progress she might have made in the direction of nationality it would
still have been a despotism. The common man would have remained a
helpless and hopeless slave. Art might have prospered; the people
might have remained simple-minded and relatively contented. But they
could not have attained that freedom and richness of life, that
personality, which we saw in our last chapter to be the criterion and
goal of true progress.
If the reader judges the above contention correct and agrees with the
writer that the conception of the inherent value of a human being
could not arise spontaneously in Japan, he will conclude that the
progress of Japan depended on securing this important conception from
without. Exactly this has taken place. By her thorough-going
abandonment of the feudal social order and adoption of the
constitutional and representative government of Christendom, whether
she recognizes it or not, she has accepted the principles of the
inherent worth of manhood and womanhood, as well as government by
discussion. Japan has thus, by imitation rather than by origination,
entered on the path of endless progress.
So important, however, is the step recently taken that further
analysis of this method of progress is desirable for its full
comprehension. We have already noted quite briefly[F] how Japan was
supplied by the West with the ideal of national unity and the material
instruments essential to its attainment. In connection with the high
development of the nation as a whole, these two elements of progress,
the ideal and the material, need further consideration.
We note in the first place that both begin with imitation, but if
progress is to be real and lasting, both must grow to independence.
The first and by far the most important is the psychical, the
introduction of new ideas. So long as the old, familiar ideas hold
sway over the mind of a nation, there is little or no stimulus to
comparison and discussion. Stagnation is well-nigh complete. But let
new ideas be so introduced as to compel attention and comprehension,
and the mind spontaneously awakes to wonderful activity. The old
stagnation is no longer possible. Discussion is started; and in the
end something must take place, even if the new ideas are not accepted
wholly or even in part. But they will not gain attention if presented
simply in the abstract, unconnected with real life. They must bring
evidence that, if accepted and lived, they will be of practical use,
that they will give added power to the nation.
Exactly this took place in 1854 when Admiral Perry demanded entrance
to Japan. The people suddenly awoke from their sleep of two and a half
centuries to find that new nations had arisen since they closed their
eyes, nations among which new sets of ideas had been at work, giving
them a power wholly unknown to the Orient and even mysterious to it.
Those ideas were concerned, not alone with the making of guns, the
building of ships, the invention of machinery, the taming and using of
the forces of nature, but also with methods of government and law,
with strange notions, too, about religion and duty, about the family
and the individual, which the foreigners said were of inestimable
value and importance. It needed but a few years of intercourse with
Western peoples to convince the most conservative that unless the
Japanese themselves could gain the secret of their power, either by
adopting their weapons or their civilization, they themselves must
fade away before the stronger nations. The need of self-preservation
was the first great stimulus that drove new thoughts into unwilling
brains.
There can be no doubt that the Japanese were right in this analysis of
the situation. Had they insisted on maintaining their old methods of
national life and social order and ancient customs, there can be no
doubt as to the result. Africa and India in recent decades and China
and Korea in the most recent years tell the story all too clearly.
Those who know the course of treaty conferences and armed collisions,
as at Shimonoseki and Kagoshima between Japan and the foreign nations,
have no doubt that Japan, divided into clans and persisting in her
love of feudalism, would long since have become the territory of some
European Power. She was saved by the possession of a remarkable
combination of national characteristics,--the powers of observation,
of appreciation, and of imitation. In a word, her sensitiveness to her
environment and her readiness to respond to it proved to be her
salvation.
But the point on which I wish to lay special emphasis is that the
prime element of the form in which the deliverance came was through
the acquisition of numerous new ideas. These were presented by persons
who thoroughly believed in them and who admittedly had a power not
possessed by the Japanese themselves. Though unable to originate these
ideas, the Japanese yet proved themselves capable of understanding and
appreciating them--in a measure at least. They were at first attracted
to that which related chiefly to the externals of civilization, to
that which would contribute immediately to the complete political
centralization of the nation. With great rapidity they adopted Western
ideas about warfare and weapons. They sent their young men abroad to
study the civilization of the foreign nations. At great expense they
also employed many foreigners to teach them in their own land the
things they wished to learn. Thus have the Japanese mastered so
rapidly the details of those ideas which, less than fifty years ago,
were not only strange but odious to them.
Under their influence, the conditions which history shows to be the
most conducive to the continuous growth of civilization have been
definitely accepted and adopted by the people, namely, popular rights,
the liberty of individuals to differ from the past so far as this does
not interfere with national unity, and the direct responsibility and
relation of each individual to the nation without any mediating group.
These rights and liberties are secured to the individual by a
constitution and by laws enacted by representative legislatures.
Government by discussion has been fairly inaugurated.
During these years of change the effort has been to leave the old
social order as undisturbed as possible. For example, it was hoped
that the reorganization of the military and naval forces of the Empire
would be sufficient without disturbing the feudal order and without
abolishing the feudal states. But this was soon found ineffectual. For
a time it was likewise thought that the adoption of Western methods of
government might be made without disturbing the old religious ideas
and without removing the edicts against Christianity. But experience
soon showed that the old civilization was a unit. No part could be
vitally modified without affecting the whole structure. Having knocked
over one block in the long row that made up their feudal social order,
it was found that each successive block was touched and fell, until
nothing was left standing as before. It was found also that the old
ideas of education, of travel, of jurisprudence, of torture and
punishment, of social ranks, of the relation of the individual to the
state, of the state to the family, and of religion to the family, were
more or less defective and unsuited to the new civilization. Before
this new movement all obstructive ideas, however, sanctioned by
antiquity, have had to give way. The Japanese of to-day look, as it
were, upon a new earth and a new heaven. Those of forty years ago
would be amazed, not only at the enormous changes in the externals,
life and government, but also at the transformation which has
overtaken every element of the older civilization. Putting it rather
strongly, it is now not the son who obeys the father, but the father
the son. The rulers no longer command the people, but the people
command the rulers. The people do not now toil to support the state;
but the state toils to protect the people.
Whether the incoming of these new ideas and practices be thought to
constitute progress or not will depend on one's view of the aim of
life. If this be as maintained in the previous chapter, then surely
the transformation of Japan must be counted progress. That, however,
to which I call attention is the fact that the essential requisite of
progress is the attainment of new ideas, whatever be their source.
Japan has not only taken up a great host of these, but in doing so she
has adopted a social structure to stimulate the continuous production
of new ideas, through the development of individuality. She is thus in
the true line of continuously progressive evolution. Imitating the
stronger nations, she has introduced into her system the life-giving
blood of free discussion, popular education, and universal individual
rights and liberty. In a word, she has begun to be an individualistic
nation. She has introduced a social order fitted to a wide development
of personality.
The importance of the second line of progress, the physical, would
seem to be too obvious to call for any detailed consideration. But so
much has been said by both graceful and able writers on Japan as to
the advantages she enjoys from her simple non-mechanical civilization,
and the mistake she is making in adopting the mechanical civilization
of the West, that it may not be amiss to dwell for a few moments upon
it. I wish to show that the second element of progress consists in the
_increasing use of mechanisms_.
The enthusiastic admirer of Japan hardly finds words wherewith
sufficiently to praise the simplicity of her pre-Meiji civilization.
No furniture brings confusion to the room; no machinery distresses the
ear with its groanings or the eye with its unsightliness. No factories
blacken the sky with smoke. No trains screeching through the towns and
cities disturb sleepers and frighten babies. The simple bed on the
floor, the straw sandal on the foot, wooden chopsticks in place of
knives and forks, the small variety of foods and of cooking utensils,
the simple, homespun cotton clothing, the fascinating homes, so small
and neat and clean--in truth all that pertains to Old Japan finds
favor in the eyes of the enthusiastic admirer from the Occident. One
such writer, in an elaborate paper intended to set forth the
superiority of the original Japanese to the Occidental civilization,
uses the following language: "Ability to live without furniture,
without impedimenta, with the least possible amount of neat clothing,
shows more than the advantage held by the Japanese race in the
struggle of life; it shows also the real character of some of the
weaknesses in our own civilization. It forces reflection upon the
useless multiplicity of our daily wants. We must have meat and bread
and butter; glass windows and fire; hats, white shirts, and woolen
underwear; boots and shoes; trunks, bags, and boxes; bedsteads,
mattresses, sheets, and blankets; all of which a Japanese can do
without, and is really better off without."[G] Surely one finds much
of truth in this, and there is no denying the charm of the simpler
civilization, but the closing phrase of the quotation is the
assumption without discussion of the disputed point. Are the Japanese
really better off without these implements of Western civilization?
Evidently they themselves do not think so. For, in glancing through
the list as given by the writer quoted, one realizes the extent of
Japanese adoption of these Western devices. Hardly an article but is
used in Japan, and certainly with the supposition of the purchaser
that it adds either to his health or his comfort. In witness are the
hundreds of thousands of straw hats, the glass windows everywhere,
and the meat-shops in each town and city of the Empire. The charm of a
foreign fashion is not sufficient explanation for the rapidly
spreading use of foreign inventions.