intensive development; it is the focalizing and centralizing of the
consciousness of the national unity in each individual member. The
extensive process of communal enlargement must ever be accompanied by
the intensive establishment in the individual of the communal ideal,
the objective by the subjective, the physical by the psychical, if the
accidental association for individual profit is to develop into the
permanent association for the national as well as the individual life.
The intensive or subjective development of the communal principle
does, as a matter of fact, take place in all growing communities, but
it is largely unconscious. Not until the final stages of national
development does it become a self-conscious process, deserving the
distinctive name I have given it here, communo-individualism.[CG]
The point just made is, however, only one aspect of a more general
fact, too, of cardinal importance for the sociologist and the student
of human evolution. It is that, throughout the entire period of the
expansion of the community, there has been an equally profound,
although wholly unconscious, development of the individual. This fact
seems to have largely escaped the notice of all but the most recent
thinkers and writers on the general topic of human and social
evolution. The fact and the importance of the communal life have been
so manifest that, in important senses, the individual has been almost,
if not wholly, dropped out of sight. The individual has been
conceived to have been from the very beginning of social evolution
fully endowed with mind, ideas, and brains, and to be perfectly
regardless of all other human beings. The development of the community
has accordingly been conceived to be a progressive taming and subduing
of this wild, self-centered, primitive man; a process of eliminating
his individualistic instincts. So far as the individual is concerned,
it has been conceived to be chiefly a negative process; a process of
destroying his individual desires and plans and passions. Man's
natural state has been supposed to be that of absolute selfishness.
Only the hard necessity of natural law succeeded in forcing him to
curb his natural selfish desires and to unite with his fellows. Only
on these terms could he maintain even an existence. Those who have not
accepted these terms have been exterminated. Communal life in all its
forms, from the family upward to the most unified and developed
nation, is thus conceived as a continued limiting of the individual--a
necessity, indeed, to his existence, but none the less a limitation.
I am unable to take this view, which at best is a one-sided statement.
It appears to me capable of demonstration, that communal and
individual development proceed pari passu; that every gain in the
communal life is a gain to the individual and vice versa. They are
complementary, not contradictory processes. Neither can exist, in any
proper sense, apart from the other; and the degree of the development
of the one is a sure index of the degree of the development of the
other. So important is this matter that we must pause to give it
further consideration.
Consider, first, man in his earliest stage of development. A
relatively segregarious animal; with a few ideas about the nuts and
fruits and roots on which he lives; with a little knowledge as to
where to find them; the subject of constant fear lest a stronger man
may suddenly appear to seize and carry off his wife and food;
possessing possibly a few articulate sounds answering to words; such
probably was primitive man. He must have been little removed from the
ape. His "self," his mind, was so small and so empty of content that
we could hardly recognize him as a man, should we stumble on him in
the forest.
Look next upon him after he has become a family-man. Living in the
group, his life enlarges; his existence broadens; his ideas multiply;
his vocabulary increases with his ideas and experiences; he begins to
share the life and thinking and interests and joys and sorrows of
others; their ideas and experiences become his, to his enormous
advantage. What he now is throws into the shade of night what he used
to be. So far from being the loser by his acceptance of even this
limited communal life, he is a gainer in every way. He begins to know
what love is, and hate; what joy is, and sorrow; what kindness is, and
cruelty; what altruism is, and selfishness. Thus, not only in ideas
and language, in industry and property, but also in emotions, in
character, in morality, in religion, in the knowledge of self, and
even in opportunity for selfishness, he is the gainer. In just the
degree that communal life is developed is the life of the individuals
that compose it extended both subjectively and objectively. Human
psychogenesis takes place in the communal stage of his life. Human
association is its chief external cause.
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]