[Footnote BI: P. 169.]
[Footnote BJ: It is interesting to observe that the contempt of Old
Japan for trade, and the feeling that interest and profit by commerce
were in their nature immoral, are in close accord with the old Greek
and Jewish ideas regarding property profits and interest. Aristotle
held, for instance, that only the gains of agriculture, of fishing,
and of hunting are natural gains. Plato, in the Laws, forbids the
taking of interest. Cato says that lending money on interest is
dishonorable, is as bad as murder. The Old Testament, likewise,
forbids the taking of interest from a Jew. The reason for this
universal feeling of antiquity, both Oriental and Occidental, lies in
the fact that trade and money were not yet essential parts of the
social order. Positive production, such as hunting and farming, seemed
the natural method of making a living, while trade seemed
unnatural--living upon the labor of others. That Japan ranked the
farmer higher in the social scale than the merchant is, thus, natural.
In moral character, too, it is altogether probable that they were much
higher.]
[Footnote BK: _Cf_. chapter ix. p. 103.]
[Footnote BL: Chapter vi.]
[Footnote BM: Chapter xxix. p. 339.]
[Footnote BN: An anonymous writer, in a pamphlet entitled "How the
Social Evil is Regulated in Japan," gives some valuable facts on this
subject. He describes the early history of the "Social Evil," and the
various classes of prostitutes. He distinguishes between the "jigoku"
(unlicensed prostitutes), the "shogi" (licensed prostitutes), and the
"geisha" (singing and dancing girls). He gives translations of the
various documents in actual use at present, and finally attempts to
estimate the number of women engaged in the business. The method of
reaching his conclusions does not commend itself to the present writer
and his results seem absurdly wide of the mark, when compared with
more carefully gathered figures. They are hardly worth quoting, yet
they serve to show what exaggerated views are held by some in regard
to the numbers of prostitutes in Japan. He tells us that a moderate
estimate for licensed prostitutes and for geisha is 500,000 each,
while the unlicensed number at least a million, making a total of
2,000,000 or 10 per cent. of the total female population of Japan! A
careful statistical inquiry on this subject has been recently made by
Rev. U.G. Murphy. His figures were chiefly secured from provincial
officers. According to these returns the number of licensed
prostitutes is 50,553 and of dancing girls is 30,386. Mr. Murphy's
figures cannot be far astray, and furnish us something of a basis for
comparison with European countries. Statistics regarding unlicensed
prostitutes are naturally not to be had.]
[Footnote BO: P. 148.]
[Footnote BP: June 25, 1898.]
[Footnote BQ: The last line of figures, those for 1897, is taken from
Rev. U.G. Murphy's statistical pamphlet on "The Social Evil in
Japan."]
[Footnote BR: It is stated that Mill's work on "Representative
Government," which, translated, fills a volume of five hundred pages
in Japanese, has reached its third edition.]
[Footnote BS: The _Japan Mail_ for February 5, 1896; quoting from the
_Jiji Shimpo_.]
[Footnote BT: The best summary of this discussion which I have seen in
English is found in the _Japan Mail_ for February 4, 1899.]
[Footnote BU: _Japan Mail, _January 14, 1899.]
[Footnote BV: _Japan Mail, _June 24, 1898.]
[Footnote BW: The constituency of the Doshisha consists principally of
Kumiai Christians.]
[Footnote BX: "Occult Japan," p. 23.]
[Footnote BY: _Cf._ chapter xxiv.]
[Footnote BZ: "A Japanese Philosopher," p. 120.]
[Footnote CA: In immediate connection with this oft-quoted statement,
however, I would put the following, as much more recent, and probably
representing more correctly the Marquis's matured opinion. Mr. Kakehi,
for some time one of the editors of the Osaka _Mainichi Shinbun_
(Daily News), after an interview with the illustrious statesman in
which many matters of national importance were discussed, was asked by
the Marquis where he had been educated. On learning that he was a
graduate of the Doshisha, the Marquis remarked: "The only true
civilization is that which rests on Christian principles, and that
consequently, as Japan must attain her civilization on these
principles, those young men who receive Christian education will be
the main factors in the development of future Japan."]
[Footnote CB: Chamberlain's "Things Japanese," p. 358.]
[Footnote CC: "Things Japanese," p. 70, and Murray's "Hand-book for
Japan," p. 37.]
[Footnote CD: "Things Japanese," p. 93.]
[Footnote CE: P. 85.]
[Footnote CF: _Cf._ chapter xxiii. p. 271.]
[Footnote CG: By the term "centralization" I mean personal
centralization. Political centralization is the gathering of all the
lines of governmental authority to a single head or point. Personal
centralization, on the contrary, is the development in the individual
of enlarging and joyous consciousness of his relations with his
fellow-countrymen, and the bringing of the individual into
increasingly immediate relations of interdependence with
ever-increasing numbers of his fellow-men, economically,
intellectually, and spiritually. These enlarging relations and the
consciousness of them must be loyally and joyfully accepted. They
should arouse enthusiasm. The real unity of society, true national
centralization, includes both the political and the personal phase.
The more conscious the process and the relation, the more real is the
unity. By this process each individual becomes of more importance to
the entire body, as well as more dependent upon it. While each
individual becomes with increasing industrial development more
specialized in economic function, if his personal development has been
properly carried on, he also becomes in mind and in character a
micro-community, summing up in his individual person the national
unity with all its main interests, knowledge, and character.]
[Footnote CGa: P. 14.]
[Footnote CH: P. 15.]
[Footnote CI: Pp. 88, 89.]
[Footnote CJ: Pp. 203, 204.]
[Footnote CK: _Cf._ chapter viii.]
[Footnote CL: See the _Rikugo Zasshi_ for March, 1898.]
[Footnote CM: _Cf._ chapter xv.]
[Footnote CN: Buddhism is largely responsible for the wide practice of
"joshi," through its doctrine that lovers whom fate does not permit to
be married in this world may be united in the next because of the
strength of their love.]
[Footnote CO: P. 88.]
[Footnote CP: P. 12.]
[Footnote CQ: P. 14.]
[Footnote CR: P. 15.]
[Footnote CS: In their relations with foreigners, the people, but
especially the Christians, are exceedingly lenient, forgiving and
overlooking our egregious blunders both of speech and of manner,
particularly if they feel that we have a kindly heart. Yet it is the
uniform experience of the missionary that he frequently hurts unawares
the feelings of his Japanese fellow-workers. Few thoughts more
frequently enter the mind of the missionary, as he deals with
Christian workers, than how to say this needful truth and do that
needful deed so as not to hurt the feelings of those whom he would
help. The individual who feels slighted or insulted will probably give
no active sign of his wound. He is too polite or too politic for that.
He will merely close like a clam and cease to have further cordial
feelings and relations with the person who has hurt him.]
[Footnote CT: _Cf._ chapter xiii.]
[Footnote CU: See chapter xxix.]
[Footnote CV: P. 201.]
[Footnote CW: _Cf._ chapter vii.]
[Footnote CX: It seems desirable to guard against an inference that
might be made from what I have said about Hegel's "Nothing." Hegel saw
clearly that his "Nothing" was only the farthest limit of abstraction,
and that it was consequently absolutely empty and worthless. It was
only his starting point of thought, not his end, as in the case of
Brahmanism and of Buddhism. Only after Hegel had passed the "Nothing"
through all the successive stages of thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis, and thus clothed it with the fullness of being and
character, did he conceive it to be the concrete, actual Absolute.
There is, therefore, the farthest possible difference between Hegel's
Absolute Being and Buddha's Absolute. Hegel sought to understand and
state in rational form the real nature of the Christian's conception
of God. Whether he did so or not, this is not the place to say.]
[Footnote CY: I remark, in passing, that Western non-Christian thought
has experienced, and still experiences, no little difficulty in
conceiving the ultimate nature of being, and thus in solving the
problem, into which, as a cavernous tomb, the speculative religions of
the Orient have fallen. Western non-Christian systems, whether
materialism, consistent agnosticism, impersonal pantheism, or other
systems which reject the Christian conception of God as perfect
personality endowed with all the fullness of being and character,
equally with philosophic Buddhism, fail to provide any theoretic
foundation for the doctrine of the value of man as man, and
consequently fail to provide any guarantee for individualism in the
social order and the wide development of personality among the
masses.]
[Footnote CZ: _Cf._ chapter vi.]
[Footnote DA: Foot of chapter xxix.]
[Footnote DB: Chapter xxxiii. p. 498.]
[Footnote DC: It seems desirable to append a brief additional
statement on the doctrine of the "personality of God," and its
acceptability to the Japanese. I wish to make it clear, in the first
place, that the difficulties felt by the Japanese in adopting this
doctrine are not due primarily to the deficiency either of the
Japanese language or to the essential nature of the Japanese mind,
that is to say, because of its asserted structural "impersonality." We
have seen how the entire thought of the people, and even the direct
moral teachings, imply both the fact of personality in man, and also
its knowledge. The religious teachings, likewise, imply the
personality even of "Heaven."
That there are philosophical or, more correctly speaking, metaphysical
difficulties attending this doctrine, I am well aware; and that they
are felt by some few Japanese, I also know. But I maintain that these
difficulties have been imported from the West. The difficulties raised
by a sensational philosophy which results in denying the reality even
of man's psychic nature, no less than the difficulties due to a
thoroughgoing idealism, have both been introduced among educated
Japanese and have found no little response. I am persuaded that the
real causes of the doubt entertained by a few of the Christians in
Japan as to the personality of God are of foreign origin. These doubts
are to be answered in exactly the same way as the same difficulties
are answered in other lands. It must be shown that the sensational and
"positive" philosophies, ending in agnosticism as to all the great
problems of life and of reality, are essentially at fault in not
recognizing the nature of the mind that knows. The searching criticism
of these assumptions and methods made by T.H. Green and other careful
thinkers, and to which no answer has been made by the sensational and
agnostic schools of thought, needs to be presented in intelligible
Japanese for the fairly educated Japanese student and layman. So, too,
the discussions of such writers and philosophical thinkers as Seth,
and Illingworth, and especially Lotze, whose discussions of
"personality" are unsurpassed, should be presented to Japanese
thinkers in native garb. But, again I repeat, it seems to me that the
difficulty felt in Japan on these subjects is due not to the
"impersonality" of the language or the native mind, or to the hitherto
prevalent religions, but wholly to the imported philosophies and
sciences. The individuals who feel or at least express any sense of
difficulty on these topics--so far at least as my knowledge of the
subject goes--are not those who know nothing but their own language
and their own native religions, but rather those who have had
exceptional advantages in foreign study, many of them having spent
years abroad in Western universities. They furnish a fresh revelation
of the quickness with which the Japanese take up with new ideas. They
did not evolve these difficulties for themselves, but gathered them
from their reading of Western literature and by their mingling with
men of unevangelical temper and thought in the West.]
[Footnote DD: "Sacred Books of the East," vol. xlix, part ii. p. 147.]
[Footnote DE: _Cf._ chapters xiii. and xxxi.]
[Footnote DF: It is not strange that in all the centers of this new
learning Confucius was deified and worshiped. In connection with many
schools established for the study of his works, temples were built to
his honor, in which his statue alone was placed, before which a
stately religious service was performed at regular intervals. Thus did
Confucianism become a living and vitalizing, although, as we shall
soon see, an incomplete religion.]
[Footnote DG: Writers on the history and philosophy of religion have
much to say about the differences between national and universal
religions. The three religions which they pronounce universal are
Mahomedanism, Buddhism, and Christianity. The ground for this
statement is the fact that each of these religions has developed
strong individualistic characteristics. They are concerned with
individual salvation. The importance of this element none will deny,
least of all the writer. But I question the correctness of the
descriptive adjective. Because of their individualistic character they
are fitted to leap territorial boundaries and can find acceptance in
every community; for this they are not dependent on the territorial
expansion of the communities in which they arose.]
[Footnote DH: P. xvii.]
[Footnote DI: P. xviii.]
[Footnote DJ: P. 19.]
[Footnote DK: P. 6.]
[Footnote DL: P. 37.]
[Footnote DM: P. 83.]
[Footnote 2: Whether or not the activity modifies the transmissible
nature is the problem as to the inheritance of acquired
characteristics. The dictum that function produces organism does not
say whether that organism is transmissible or not, either in biology
or sociology.]