selection is one of the principles transforming biological
inheritance; but whether the _acquired_ characters of parents are even
in the least degree inherited by the offspring, thus becoming _innate_
characters, is one of the important biological problems of recent
years. Into this problem we have not entered, though we recognize that
it must have important bearings on sociological science. Briefly
stated, it is this: Do social and psychic characteristics, acquired by
individuals or by groups of individuals, affect the intrinsic
inherited and transmissible psychic nature in such ways that
offspring, by the mere fact of being offspring, necessarily manifest
those characteristics, regardless of the particular social environment
in which they may be reared? Into this problem, thus broadly stated,
we do not enter. Limiting our view to those advanced races which
manifest practically equal physiological development, we ask whether
or not their differentiating psychic characteristics are due to
modifications of their inherited and intrinsic psychic nature, such
that those characteristics are necessarily transmitted to offspring
through intrinsic biological heredity. Current popular and scientific
sociology seems to give an affirmative answer to this question. The
reply of this work emphasizes the negative. Although it is not
maintained that there is absolutely no difference whatever in the
psychic nature of the different races, or that the psychic differences
distinguishing the races are entirely transmitted by social heredity,
it is maintained that this is very largely the case--far more largely
than is usually perceived or admitted. Such inherent differences, if
they exist, are so vague and intangible as practically to defy
discovery and clear statement, and may be practically ignored.
The only adequate disproof of the position here maintained would be
about as follows. Let a Japanese infant be reared in an American home
from infancy, not only fed and clothed as an American, but loved as a
member of the family and trained as carefully and affectionately as
one's own child. The full conditions require that not only the child
himself, but everyone else, be ignorant of his parentage and race in
order that he be thought to be, and be treated as though he were, a
genuine member of his adopting home and people. What would be the
psychic characteristics of that child when grown to manhood? If he
should manifest psychic traits like those of his Japanese parents, if
he should think in the Japanese order, if he should have a tendency to
use prepositions as postpositions, if he should drop pronouns and
should use honorific words in their place, if he should be markedly
suspicious and inferential, if he should bow in making his salutations
rather than shake hands, if he should show marked preference for
sitting on the floor rather than on chairs, and for chopsticks to
knives and forks, and if developing powers as an artist he should
naturally paint Japanese pictures, Japanese landscapes, and Japanese
faces, finding himself unable to draw according to the canons of
Western art, if on developing poetic tastes he should find special
pleasure in seventeen syllable or thirty-one syllable exclamatory
poems, finding little interest in Longfellow or Shakespeare, if, in
short, he should develop a predilection for any distinctive Japanese
custom, habit of thought, method of speech, emotion or volition, it
would evidently be due to his intrinsic heredity. If in all these
matters, however, he should prove to be like an American, acquiring an
American education like any American boy, and if on being brought to
Japan, at, say, thirty years of age, still supposing himself to be an
American, he should have equal difficulty with any American in
mastering the language and adapting himself to and understanding the
Japanese people, then it would follow that his psychic characteristics
have been inherited socially and he is what he is, nationally, because
of his social heritage. Such a result would show that the psychic
traits differentiating races are social and not intrinsic.
We have limited our discussion to the advanced races because the
problem is then relatively simple, the material abundant, and the
issue clear. Much discussion in theology, psychology, and sociology is
futile because it concerns that practically mythical being, the
aboriginal man, about whose social and psychic life no one knows
anything, and any theorizer can say what he chooses without fear of
shipwreck on incontrovertible facts. Whether the lowest races known
to-day are differentiated from the highest only by acquired social and
psychic characteristics, or also by differences of psychic nature, may
perhaps be an open question. However this may be, the case is fairly
clear in regard to the higher races inhabiting the earth. Their
differentiating psychic characteristics are, for the most part, not
due to diverse psychic nature, but to diverse social orders, while the
transmission of these characteristics takes place, as a matter of
observation, through social heredity.
The discussions of this work are exclusively concerned with the
evolution of society and of psychic characteristics. But even in this
limited field we have not attempted to cover the whole ground. We have
given our chief attention to the interdependence of social phenomena
and psychic characteristics. The causes of evolution in the social
order have not been the main subject under discussion.
Segregation is the essential condition on which divergent evolution is
dependent. Many forms of segregation may be specified, under each of
which evolution proceeds on a different principle. In brief, it may be
said that biological segregation prevents the swamping of incipient
organic divergences, by preventing the intermarriage of those
possessing such divergences, while social segregation prevents the
swamping of incipient social divergences and their corresponding
incipient psychic characteristics by preventing the inter-association
of those having such tendencies.
Biologically segregated groups undergo divergent biological evolution
through segregated marriage, producing distinct physiological unities
or racial types. These racial types are now relatively fixed and can
be appreciably modified only by the intermarriage of different races.
Socially segregated groups undergo divergent social evolution through
the segregated social intercourse of the members of each group,
producing distinct civilizational and psychic unities. The differences
between these social or psychic groups are relatively plastic and are
the subject of constant variation. The modification of the social and
psychic characteristics of a group takes place through a change in the
physical or social environment of the group, or through the rise of
strong personalities within the group.
Biologically distinct groups may thus be unified biologically only by
intermarriage, while socially physically distinct groups may be
unified socially and psychically without intermarriage, but
exclusively through association.
The psychic defects of the offspring of interracial marriages may be
largely due to the defective social heredity transmitted by the
parents, rather than to mixed intrinsic inheritance.
The term "race soul" is a convenient, though delusive, because highly
figurative, expression for the psychic unity of a social group. The
unity is due entirely to the more or less complete possession by the
individual members of the group, of common ideas, ideals, methods of
thought, emotions, volitions, customs, institutions, arts, and
beliefs.
Each individual is molded psychically to the type of the social group
in which he is reared. The "race soul" is thus imposed on the
individual by conscious and unconscious education.
The psychic evolution of social groups is divergent so long as
isolation is fairly complete, but becomes convergent in proportion to
association. Perfect association produces complete psychic unity,
though it should be noted that perfect association of geographically
separated social groups is practically unattainable.
The essential elements constituting national unity are psychic and
social, not biological. Racial unity is biological. The same race may
accordingly separate into different social and psychic groups. And
members of different races may belong to the same social psychic
group.
The so-called "race soul" of many sociologists is, therefore, a
fiction and indicates mental confusion. The term refers not to the
racial unity of inherent psychic nature, but only to the social unity
of socially inherited psychic characteristics. Groups thus socially
unified may or may not be racially homogeneous. In point of fact no
race is strictly homogeneous biologically, nor is any social group
completely unified psychically.
In sociology as in biology function produces organism, that is to say,
activity produces the organ or faculty fitted to perform the
activity.[2] The psychic characteristics differentiating social groups
are chiefly, and perhaps exclusively, due to diverse social
activities. These activities are determined by innumerable causes,
geographical, climatic, economic, political, intellectual, emotional,
and personal.
The plasticity of a psychic group is due to the plasticity of the
infant mind and brain, which is wonderfully capable of acquiring the
language, thought forms, and differentiating characteristics of any
group in which it may be reared. To what extent this plasticity
extends only carefully conducted experiments can show. In the higher
Asiatic and European races we find it to be much greater than is
generally supposed to be the case, but it is not improbable that the
lowest races possess it in a much lower degree.
The relative fixity of a psychic group is due to the fact that in
full-grown adults, who form the majority of every group, function has
produced structure. Body, brain, and mind have "set" or crystallized
in the mold provided by the social order. Influences sufficiently
powerful to transform the young have little effect on the adult. The
relative fixity of a psychic group is also due to the
difficulty--well-nigh impossibility--of bringing new psychic
influences to bear on all members of the group simultaneously. The
majority, being oblivious to the new psychic forces, maintain the old
psychic régime. The difficulty of reform, of transforming a social
order, is principally due to these two causes.
The "character" of a people (psychic group) consists of its more or
less unconscious, because structuralized or incarnate, ideas,
emotions, and volitions. Chief among them are those concerning the
character of God, the nature and value of man and woman, the necessary
relation of character to destiny, the nature and meaning of life and
death, and the nature and the authority of moral law. In proportion as
the social order incorporates high or low views on these vital
subjects, is the character of the people elevated and strong, or
debased and weak.
The destiny of a people, and the rôle it plays in history, are
determined not by chance nor yet by environment, but in the last
analysis by its own character. Yet this character is not something
given it complete at the start, an intrinsic psychical inheritance,
nor is it dependent for transmission on biological heredity, passing
only from parents to offspring. Character belongs to the sphere of
social psychic life and is the subject of social heredity. Through
social intercourse the moral character dominating a psychic group may
be transmitted to members of an alien psychic group. This usually
takes place through missionary activity. The moral character of a
psychic group may in this way be fundamentally transformed, and with
character, destiny.
Floating ideas, not yet woven into the warp and woof of life, not yet
incarnate in the individual or in the social order, have little
influence on the character of the individual or the group, however
beautiful, true, or elevating such ideas may be in themselves. The
character of a people is to be judged, therefore, not by the beauty or
elevation of every idea that may be found in its literature, but only
by those ideas that have been assimilated, that have become
incorporated into the social order. These determine a people's
character and destiny. According as these ideas persist in the social
order, is its character permanent.
Progress consists of expanding life, communal and individual,
extensive and intensive, physical and psychical. True progress is
balanced. High communal development, that is, highly organized
society, is impossible without the wide attainment of highly developed
individuals. Progressive mastery of nature likewise is impossible
apart from growing psychic development in all its branches, emotional,
intellectual and volitional, communal and individual.
Historically, communalism is the first principle to emerge in
consciousness. To succeed, however, it must be accompanied by at least
a certain degree of individualism, even though it be quite implicit.
The full development of the communal principle is impossible apart
from the correspondingly full development of the individual principle.
These are complementary principles of progress. Each alone is
impossible. In proportion as either is emphasized at the expense of
the other, is progress impeded. Arrested civilizations are due to the
disproportionate and excessive development of one or the other of
these principles.
Personality, expressing and realizing itself in communal and
individual life, in objective and subjective forms, is at once the
cause and the goal of progress. Social and psychic evolution are,
therefore, in the last analysis, personal processes. The irreducible
and final factor in social evolution and in social science is
personality; for personality is the determinative factor of a human
being.
Progress in personal development consists of increasing extent and
accuracy of knowledge, refinement and elevation of emotions, and
nobility and reliability of volitions. Progress in personal
development requires the individual to pass from objective
heterocratic to subjective autocratic or self-regulative ethical life.
He must pass from the traditional to the enlightened, from the
communal to the individualistic stage in ethics and religion. He must
feel with increasing force the binding nature of the supra-communal
sanctions for communal and individual life, accepting the highest
dictates of the enlightened moral consciousness as the laws of the
universe. But this means that the individual must secure increasing
insight into the immutable and eternal laws of spiritual being and
must identify his personal interests, his very self with those laws,
with the Heart of the. Universe, with God himself. Only so will he
become completely autonomous, self-regulative. Only thus will the
individual become and remain an altruistic communo-individual, fitted
to meet and survive the relaxation of the historic communal and
supra-communal sanctions for communal and individual life, a
relaxation induced by growing political liberty and growing
intellectual rejection of primitive or defective religious beliefs.
Progress in personality is thus at bottom an ethico-religious process.
The wide attainment of developed personality permits the formation of
enlarging highly organized psychic groups, accompanied by increasing
specialization of its individual members. This communal expansion,
ramifying organization and individual specialization, secures
increasing extensive and intensive intellectual understanding of the
universe, and this in turn active mastery of nature, with all the
consequences of growing ease and richness of life.
Ethico-religious, autonomous personality is thus the tap-root of
highly developed and permanently progressive civilizations.
Personality is, therefore, the criterion of progress. Mere ease of
physical life, freedom from anxiety, light-hearted, care-free
happiness, mastery of nature, material civilization, highly developed
art, literature, and music, or even refined culture, are partial and
inadequate, if not positively false, criteria.
Personality, as a nature, is an inherent psychic heritage shared by
all human beings. It is transmitted only from parents to offspring,
and its transmission depends only on that relation. Personality, as a
varying psychic characteristic, is a matter of social inheritance, and
is profoundly dependent, therefore, on the nature of the social order
and the social evolution.
Religion, as incorporated in life, is the most important single factor
determining the personality and character of its adherents, either
hindering or promoting their progress.
Japanese social and psychic evolution have in no respects violated the
universal laws of evolution. Japanese personal and other psychic
characteristics are the product not of essential, but of social
inheritance and social evolution. Japan has recently entered into a
new social inheritance from which she is joyfully accepting new
conceptions and principles of communal and individual life. These she
is working into her social organism.
Already these are producing profound, and we may believe permanent,
transformations in her social order and correspondingly profound and
permanent transformations of her character and destiny.
THE END
INDEX
"Abdication": in church work, 84;
due to past social conditions, 86;
explains prominence of young men, 86, 161
Æsthetic characteristics: development unbalanced, 174;
speech and conduct, 178;
development of masses, 180;
development, social not racial, 188
Adoption; family maintained, 215
Affection: post-marital, 102;
its expression, 105
Agnosticism, old not new, 247
Alcock, Sir Rutherford: quotation misleading, 172;
on untruthfulness, 255
Altruism, social or racial? 365
Ambition, 137
Ancestral worship and the importance of sons, 98
Apotheosis, 147;
"Divine right of kings," 151;
in Japan expresses unity, 152
Architectural development and social heredity, 188
Arisaka, Colonel, inventions, 207
Arnold, Sir Edwin, 16, 17
Art; simplicity its characteristic, 173;
lacking the nude, 175-177;
its ideal in representing gods and men, 174;
defects, 184;
original or imitative? 203;
not "impersonal," 351
Artistic and inartistic contrasts, 184
Aston, Mr. W.G.: on poetic form, 187;
intellectual inferiority of Japanese claimed, 218;
"Japanese Literature," 228
Baelz, Dr. E., measurements of skull, 191
"Bakufu," "curtain government," 214
Bargaining, a personal experience, 212
Baths, public, 274;
cleanliness, 316
Birthday festivals, 349;
method of reckoning age, 350
Brain weights, comparative figures, 190
Brown, Rev. S.R., 90
Buckley, Prof. E., Phallic worship, 325
Buddhism: relation to the family, 112;
suppression of emotion, 166;
modified in Japan, 197;
early influence, 204;
teachings about woman, 259;
lack of moral teachings, 269;
religious ecstasy, 297;
nature and history, 306, 307;
terms "ingwa" and "mei," 319;
"impersonal"? 377-388;
introspection, 378;
salvation through self, 379;
consciousness of self, highly developed, 379-380;
attributes no worth to self, 380;
failure of its influence, 381;
mercy to animals and shallow reasoning, 381;
thought of self an intellectual abstraction, 383;
not impersonal, but abstract, 384;
doctrine of illusion, 384;
failure of social order, 385;
popular acceptance not philosophical, 386;
not logically
carried out, 389-390.
appeal to personal activity, 390.
conversion of a priest to Christianity, 394.
conception of God, 398.
the universe characterized, 400.
Nirvana, 400.
supplementary to Shintoism, 407.
popularity explained, 408.
individualism defective, 408.
not exclusive in any land, 421.
Buddhistic doctrines and sociological consequences, 388.
Caricature in art: its prominence, 177.
Cary's, Rev. Otis, "Japan and Its Regeneration," 10.
Chamberlain, Prof. B.H., 17, 55, 159.
quotation on imitation,--over-emphasis, 196.
people irreligious, 287.
Character and destiny, 445.
how judged, 446
Children: their festivals, 96.
love for the young in Occident and Orient compared, 97.
infanticide, 100.
Chinese characters and the common schools, 192.
Chinese philosophy not accepted without question, 200.
Christianity: relation to the family, 111-114.
the support of new ideals, 112.
fluctuating interest in, 162, 163.
influence on woman, 168.
criticised by a Japanese, 231.
relation to new social order, 282.
its growth in Japan, 308.
monotheism, its attraction, 311.
its view of the universe, 399.
involving communalism and individualism, 415.
Civilization: two types in conflict, 13.
social not racial, 28.
its rapid modernization, 30.
Clark, Pres., 90
Cleanliness: exaggerated reputation, 315, 316.
Cocks of Tosa: the abnormal, 178.
Communalism: and human progress, 332, 333.
defined, 361.
its altruism, 367.
throws light on religious history, 404.
difficulty of combining it with individualistic religious elements, 414.
Japan appreciates its spirit, 417
Comte, 22.
Conceit, 139.
not the only conceited nation, 142.
Concubinage: children of the Emperor, 151.
Buddhistic and Confucian teaching, 259.
its sociological interpretation, 260.
increase of, 278.
statistics of, 279.
Confidence and suspicion, 120.
feudal explanation, 121.
Confucian ethics: leave gods alone, 286, 287.
antidote to Buddhism, 390.
Confucianism: its relation to the family, 112.
modified in Japan, 197.
metaphysical foundation of, 228.
its relation to morality, 269.
nature and history of, 307, 308.
its doctrines restored, 409.
its limitations, 410.
not a religion, 411.
cause of failure, 412.
Confucius and Lao-tse about returning good for evil, 128.
influence opposed to progress, 204.
Constitution, authority from Emperor, 149.
Conversation: realistic baldness, 179.
Courtesy: conventional not racial, 182.
phrases of, 211.
not proof of "impersonality," 362, 363.
Culture: more apparent than real, 181.
Curiosity: real though concealed,--illustration, 166.
"Curtain government," its significance, 214.
Daimyo, a figurehead, 214.
Darwin, 22
Decoration of rooms, 171
Dening, Mr, Walter, lack of idealism, 233
De Quatrefages, African brains, 191
Deity: conception of, 310;
monotheistic terms, 311;
common people, 391
Disposition: apparently cheerful, 115;
pessimists out of sight, 116
Divorce: grounds for, 56;
frequency of, 99;
Civil Code of 1898, 265;
statistics, 267;
divorce and "impersonality," 352, 355
Doshisha, endangered, 123, 124;
American benefactors of, 281
Drama and novel: weakness explained, 187
Drummond, 22
Dwarfed plants,--delight in the abnormal, 177
Eastern and Western civilizations blending, 30-32
Educational Department and Imperial Edict, 328
Emotional nature, 82-84;
due to social order, 169
Emperor: concubines and children of, 151
English study and methods of thinking, 212
Ethics: pivotal points, 283
Etiquette: superficial not radical requirements, 183;
its collapse explained, 183;
relation to imagination, 235
Evolution: real explanation of progress, 24-27, 33-34;
national, 332-343;
intellectual, 419;
Involution one half the process, 425;
defined, 440
Express train, "nominal" destination, 216
Fairbanks, Prof., 20
"Falling in love" not recognized, 102
Family life: false registration checks affection, 107
_Far East_: quotation from, adaptation of foreign systems, 208
Farmer, higher rank than merchant, 257 (note)
Fate: "Ingwa," in development of personality, 386
Feudal times: moderation, 118;
courage cultivated, 153, 154;
trade, 284
Fickleness: its manifestation, 159;
a modern trait, 160;
shown chiefly in methods, 160;
among Christians, apparent not real, 161