KŌBE, April, 1895.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--In writing to you, of course, I've not been writing
a book--but simply setting down the thoughts and feelings of the moment
as they come. I write a book exactly the same way; but all this has to
be smoothed, ordinated, corrected, toned over twenty times before a page
is ready. It strikes me, however, that the first raw emotion or fancy,
which is the base of all, has its value between men who understand
each other. You, on the other hand,--differently constituted,--write
a letter as you would write a book. You collect and mould the thought
instinctively and perhaps unconsciously before setting it on paper.
I'm not quite such an American radical as you think in consequence;
for I confess to a belief in the value of aristocracies--a very strong
belief. On the other hand, the reality of the thing to the man is
its relation to him personally. Don't you think your comfort in all
sorts and conditions may be due to your personal independence of those
sorts and conditions? It is like Rufz's statement that "the first
relations between men are delicious"--so long as you are in nobody's
way, and have capacity to please, you have the bright side turned to
you. (Again, there is this question: Are you sure the side you see
and like is not the artificial side? I don't say it is, but there are
possibilities.) My own dislike of mercantile people in all countries
is based upon experiences of the contrary sort. But how can men,
trained from childhood to watch for and to take all possible advantage
of human weakness, remain a morally superior class. That they don't,
needs no argument; and that the poorest people in all countries are
the most moral and self-sacrificing needs no argument either. Both are
acknowledged and indisputable facts in sociology,--in the study of
civilized races, at least. When to this marrow-bred sense of morality is
superadded the courtesy you yourself in a former letter declared without
parallel, I see nothing extravagant in the statement that a Japanese
_hyakushō_ is more of a gentleman than an English merchant can be--if
gentleness means delicate consideration for others, by means of which
virtue no man can succeed in life.
I should like to know any story of heroism--sorry not to be near you to
coax you for an outline of it. Every fact of goodness makes one better,
and an author richer, to know it. There are good heroes and heroines in
all walks of life, indeed,--though all walks of life do not necessarily
lead to goodness. Indeed, there are some which teach that goodness is
foolishness,--but all won't believe it is true.
The extraordinary wastefulness of foreign life is a fact that strikes
one hard after life in the interior. Men work like slaves for no other
earthly reason than that conventions require them to live beyond their
means; and those who are free to live as they wish live on a scale that
seems extravagant in the extreme. All goes right in the end, but I have
not yet escaped the sensation of imagining one life devouring a hundred
for mere amusement. Here is a man who spends, to my knowledge, more
than $500 a week for mere amusement. He lives, therefore, at the rate
of more than 1000 Japanese lives. I'm not disputing his right: but in
the eternal order of things the whirligig of time must bring in strange
revenges....
A paper read by Spencer before the Anthropological Society, on the
subject of the Method of Comparative Psychology, came into my hands the
other day. It was only four or five pages--so I could read it. What
a magnificent teaching for an essay on Japanese psychology! I may try
to take up the theme some day. There are some terrible suggestions,
however--such as that the Japanese indifference to abstract ideas is not
indifference, but incapacity to form general ideas. The language would
seem to confirm the suggestion.
P. S. I should like to discuss the "heredity and evolution" topic of
child-feeling, but fear to weary you with my scribble. Indeed I wrote a
long letter, but concluded not to send to-day. You are quite right about
the inherited feeling of the impulse to martial play: the new toy would
represent subjectively some slight modifications of inherited pleasure
as regards colour, form, and noise,--but the inherited feeling remains
the chief factor in the matter. A mask of _o tafuku_ as a toy would not
effect modifications in the quality of certain inherited impressions,
but only accentuate them, and accentuate others innumerable faintly
connected with them.
Ever, with regret that I cannot write more for the moment, yours
faithfully,