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The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell
Contents
Chapter 1. Individuality
Chapter 2. Family
Chapter 3. Adoption
Chapter 4. Language
Chapter 5. Nature and Art
Chapter 6. Art
Chapter 7. Religion
Chapter 8. Imagination
Chapter 1. Individuality.
The boyish belief that on the other side of our globe all things are
of necessity upside down is startlingly brought back to the man when
he first sets foot at Yokohama. If his initial glance does not,
to be sure, disclose the natives in the every-day feat of standing
calmly on their heads, an attitude which his youthful imagination
conceived to be a necessary consequence of their geographical position,
it does at least reveal them looking at the world as if from the
standpoint of that eccentric posture. For they seem to him to see
everything topsy-turvy. Whether it be that their antipodal situation
has affected their brains, or whether it is the mind of the observer
himself that has hitherto been wrong in undertaking to rectify the
inverted pictures presented by his retina, the result, at all events,
is undeniable. The world stands reversed, and, taking for granted
his own uprightness, the stranger unhesitatingly imputes to them an
obliquity of vision, a state of mind outwardly typified by the
cat-like obliqueness of their eyes.
If the inversion be not precisely of the kind he expected, it is
none the less striking, and impressibly more real. If personal
experience has definitely convinced him that the inhabitants of that
under side of our planet do not adhere to it head downwards, like
flies on a ceiling,--his early a priori deduction,--they still
appear quite as antipodal, mentally considered. Intellectually,
at least, their attitude sets gravity at defiance. For to the mind's
eye their world is one huge, comical antithesis of our own. What we
regard intuitively in one way from our standpoint, they as
intuitively observe in a diametrically opposite manner from theirs.
To speak backwards, write backwards, read backwards, is but the a b c
of their contrariety. The inversion extends deeper than mere modes
of expression, down into the very matter of thought. Ideas of ours
which we deemed innate find in them no home, while methods which
strike us as preposterously unnatural appear to be their birthright.
From the standing of a wet umbrella on its handle instead of its
head to dry to the striking of a match away in place of toward one,
there seems to be no action of our daily lives, however trivial,
but finds with them its appropriate reaction--equal but opposite.
Indeed, to one anxious of conforming to the manners and customs of
the country, the only road to right lies in following unswervingly
that course which his inherited instincts assure him to be wrong.
Yet these people are human beings; with all their eccentricities
they are men. Physically we cannot but be cognizant of the fact, nor
mentally but be conscious of it. Like us, indeed, and yet so unlike
are they that we seem, as we gaze at them, to be viewing our own
humanity in some mirth-provoking mirror of the mind,--a mirror that
shows us our own familiar thoughts, but all turned wrong side out.
Humor holds the glass, and we become the sport of our own reflections.
But is it otherwise at home? Do not our personal presentments mock
each of us individually our lives long? Who but is the daily dupe of
his dressing-glass, and complacently conceives himself to be a very
different appearing person from what he is, forgetting that his
right side has become his left, and vice versa? Yet who, when by
chance he catches sight in like manner of the face of a friend,
can keep from smiling at the caricatures which the mirror's
left-for-right reversal makes of the asymmetry of that friend's
features,--caricatures all the more grotesque for being utterly
unsuspected by their innocent original? Perhaps, could we once see
ourselves as others see us, our surprise in the case of foreign
peoples might be less pronounced.
Regarding, then, the Far Oriental as a man, and not simply as a
phenomenon, we discover in his peculiar point of view a new
importance,--the possibility of using it stereoptically. For his
mind-photograph of the world can be placed side by side with ours,
and the two pictures combined will yield results beyond what either
alone could possibly have afforded. Thus harmonized, they will help
us to realize humanity. Indeed it is only by such a combination of
two different aspects that we ever perceive substance and distinguish
reality from illusion. What our two eyes make possible for material
objects, the earth's two hemispheres may enable us to do for mental
traits. Only the superficial never changes its expression;
the appearance of the solid varies with the standpoint of the observer.
In dreamland alone does everything seem plain, and there all is
unsubstantial.
To say that the Japanese are not a savage tribe is of course
unnecessary; to repeat the remark, anything but superfluous, on the
principle that what is a matter of common notoriety is very apt to
prove a matter about which uncommonly little is known. At present
we go halfway in recognition of these people by bestowing upon them
a demi-diploma of mental development called semi-civilization,
neglecting, however, to specify in what the fractional qualification
consists. If the suggestion of a second moiety, as of something
directly complementary to them, were not indirectly complimentary to
ourselves, the expression might pass; but, as it is, the self-praise
is rather too obvious to carry conviction. For Japan's claim to
culture is not based solely upon the exports with which she
supplements our art, nor upon the paper, china, and bric-a-brac with
which she adorns our rooms; any more than Western science is
adequately represented in Japan by our popular imports there of
kerosene oil, matches, and beer. Only half civilized the Far East
presumably is, but it is so rather in an absolute than a relative
sense; in the sense of what might have been, not of what is. It is
so as compared, not with us, but with the eventual possibilities of
humanity. As yet, neither system, Western nor Eastern, is perfect
enough to serve in all things as standard for the other. The light
of truth has reached each hemisphere through the medium of its own
mental crystallization, and this has polarized it in opposite ways,
so that now the rays that are normal to the eyes of the one only
produce darkness to those of the other. For the Japanese civilization
in the sense of not being savagery is the equal of our own. It is
not in the polish that the real difference lies; it is in the
substance polished. In politeness, in delicacy, they have as a
people no peers. Art has been their mistress, though science has
never been their master. Perhaps for this very reason that art,
not science, has been the Muse they courted, the result has been all
the more widespread. For culture there is not the attainment of the
few, but the common property of the people. If the peaks of intellect
rise less eminent, the plateau of general elevation stands higher.
But little need be said to prove the civilization of a land where
ordinary tea-house girls are models of refinement, and common
coolies, when not at work, play chess for pastime.
If Japanese ways look odd at first sight, they but look more odd on
closer acquaintance. In a land where, to allow one's understanding
the freer play of indoor life, one begins, not by taking off his
hat, but by removing his boots, he gets at the very threshold a hint
that humanity is to be approached the wrong end to. When, after thus
entering a house, he tries next to gain admittance to the mind of
its occupant, the suspicion becomes a certainty. He discovers that
this people talk, so to speak, backwards; that before he can hope to
comprehend them, or make himself understood in return, he must learn
to present his thoughts arranged in inverse order from the one in
which they naturally suggest themselves to his mind. His sentences
must all be turned inside out. He finds himself lost in a labyrinth
of language. The same seems to be true of the thoughts it embodies.
The further he goes the more obscure the whole process becomes,
until, after long groping about for some means of orienting himself,
he lights at last upon the clue. This clue consists in "the survival
of the unfittest."
In the civilization of Japan we have presented to us a most
interesting case of partially arrested development; or, to speak
esoterically, we find ourselves placed face to face with a singular
example of a completed race-life. For though from our standpoint the
evolution of these people seems suddenly to have come to an end in
mid-career, looked at more intimately it shows all the signs of
having fully run its course. Development ceased, not because of
outward obstruction, but from purely intrinsic inability to go on.
The intellectual machine was not shattered; it simply ran down.
To this fact the phenomenon owes its peculiar interest. For we
behold here in the case of man the same spectacle that we see
cosmically in the case of the moon, the spectacle of a world that
has died of old age. No weak spot in their social organism
destroyed them from within; no epidemic, in the shape of foreign
hordes, fell upon them from without. For in spite of the fact that
China offers the unique example of a country that has simply lived
to be conquered, mentally her masters have invariably become her
pupils. Having ousted her from her throne as ruler, they proceeded
to sit at her feet as disciples. Thus they have rather helped than
hindered her civilization.
Whatever portion of the Far East we examine we find its mental
history to be the same story with variations. However unlike China,
Korea, and Japan are in some respects, through the careers of all
three we can trace the same life-spirit. It is the career of the
river Jordan rising like any other stream from the springs among the
mountains only to fall after a brief existence into the Dead Sea.
For their vital force had spent itself more than a millennium ago.
Already, then, their civilization had in its deeper developments
attained its stature, and has simply been perfecting itself since.
We may liken it to some stunted tree, that, finding itself prevented
from growth, bastes the more luxuriantly to put forth flowers and
fruit. For not the final but the medial processes were skipped.
In those superficial amenities with which we more particularly link
our idea of civilization, these peoples continued to grow. Their
refinement, if failing to reach our standard in certain respects,
surpasses ours considering the bare barbaric basis upon which it
rests. For it is as true of the Japanese as of the proverbial Russian,
though in a more scientific sense, that if you scratch him you will
find the ancestral Tartar. But it is no less true that the descendants
of this rude forefather have now taken on a polish of which their
own exquisite lacquer gives but a faint reflection. The surface was
perfected after the substance was formed. Our word finish, with its
double meaning, expresses both the process and the result.
There entered, to heighten the bizarre effect, a spirit common in
minds that lack originality--the spirit of imitation. Though
consequent enough upon a want of initiative, the results of this trait
appear anything but natural to people of a more progressive past.
The proverbial collar and pair of spurs look none the less odd to
the stranger for being a mental instead of a bodily habit. Something
akin to such a case of unnatural selection has there taken place.
The orderly procedure of natural evolution was disastrously
supplemented by man. For the fact that in the growth of their tree
of knowledge the branches developed out of all proportion to the
trunk is due to a practice of culture-grafting.
From before the time when they began to leave records of their
actions the Japanese have been a nation of importers, not of
merchandise, but of ideas. They have invariably shown the most
advanced free-trade spirit in preferring to take somebody else's
ready-made articles rather than to try to produce any brand-new
conceptions themselves. They continue to follow the same line of life.
A hearty appreciation of the things of others is still one of their
most winning traits. What they took they grafted bodily upon their
ancestral tree, which in consequence came to present a most
unnaturally diversified appearance. For though not unlike other
nations in wishing to borrow, if their zeal in the matter was
slightly excessive, they were peculiar in that they never assimilated
what they took. They simply inserted it upon the already existing
growth. There it remained, and throve, and blossomed, nourished by
that indigenous Japanese sap, taste. But like grafts generally,
the foreign boughs were not much modified by their new life-blood,
nor was the tree in its turn at all affected by them. Connected with
it only as separable parts of its structure, the cuttings might have
been lopped off again without influencing perceptibly the condition
of the foster-parent stem. The grafts in time grew to be great
branches, but the trunk remained through it all the trunk of a
sapling. In other words, the nation grew up to man's estate, keeping
the mind of its childhood.
What is thus true of the Japanese is true likewise of the Koreans
and of the Chinese. The three peoples, indeed, form so many links in
one long chain of borrowing. China took from India, then Korea
copied China, and lastly Japan imitated Korea. In this simple manner
they successively became possessed of a civilization which originally
was not the property of any one of them. In the eagerness they all
evinced in purloining what was not theirs, and in the perfect
content with which they then proceeded to enjoy what they had taken,
they remind us forcibly of that happy-go-lucky class in the
community which prefers to live on questionable loans rather than
work itself for a living. Like those same individuals, whatever
interest the Far Eastern people may succeed in raising now, Nature
will in the end make them pay dearly for their lack of principal.
The Far Eastern civilization resembles, in fact, more a mechanical
mixture of social elements than a well differentiated chemical
compound. For in spite of the great variety of ingredients thrown
into its caldron of destiny, as no affinity existed between them, no
combination resulted. The power to fuse was wanting. 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 exhausted early. Sleepy, no doubt, from having got
up betimes with the dawn, these dwellers in the far lands of the
morning began to look upon their day as already well 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 influence of the
last twenty years, and each man might almost be his own
great-grandfather. In race characteristics 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.
If we take, through the earth's temperate zone, a belt of country
whose northern and southern edges are determined by certain limiting
isotherms, not more than half the width of the zone apart, we shall
find that we have included in a relatively small extent of surface
almost all the nations of note in the world, past or present.
Now if we examine this belt, and compare the different parts of it
with one another, we shall be struck by a remarkable fact.
The peoples inhabiting it grow steadily more personal as we go west.
So unmistakable is this gradation of spirit, that one is tempted to
ascribe it to cosmic rather than to human causes. It is as marked
as the change in color of the human complexion observable along any
meridian, which ranges from black at the equator to blonde toward
the pole. In like manner, the sense of self grows more intense as
we follow in 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 of the very essence of the soul, then the soul of the
Far East may be said to be Impersonality.
Curious as this characteristic is as a fact, it is even more
interesting as a factor. For what it betokens of these peoples in
particular may suggest much about man generally. It may mark a
stride in theory, if a standstill in practice. Possibly it may help
us to some understanding of ourselves. Not that it promises much aid
to vexed metaphysical questions, but as a study in sociology it may
not prove so vain.
And for a thing which is always with us, its discussion may be said
to be peculiarly opportune just now. For it lies at the bottom of
the most pressing questions of the day. Of the two great problems
that stare the Western world in the face at the present moment, both
turn to it for solution. Agnosticism, the foreboding silence of
those who think, socialism, communism, and nihilism, the petulant
cry of those who do not, alike depend ultimately for the right to be
upon the truth or the falsity of the sense of self.
For if there be no such actual thing as individuality, if the
feeling we call by that name be naught but the transient illusion
the Buddhists would have us believe it, any faith founded upon it as
basis vanishes as does the picture in a revolving kaleidoscope,--
less enduring even than the flitting phantasmagoria of a dream.
If the ego be but the passing shadow of the material brain, at the
disintegration of the gray matter what will become of us? Shall we
simply lapse into an indistinguishable part of the vast universe
that compasses us round? At the thought we seem to stand straining
our gaze, on the shore of the great sea of knowledge, only to watch
the fog roll in, and hide from our view even those headlands of hope
that, like beseeching hands, stretch out into the deep.
So more materially. If individuality be a delusion of the mind, what
motive potent enough to excite endeavor in the breast of an ordinary
mortal remains? Philosophers, indeed, might still work for the
advancement of mankind, but mankind itself would not continue long
to labor energetically for what should profit only the common weal.
Take away the stimulus of individuality, and action is paralyzed at
once. For with most men the promptings of personal advantage only
afford sufficient incentive to effort. Destroy this force, then any
consideration due it lapses, and socialism is not only justified,
it is raised instantly into an axiom of life. The community, in that
case, becomes itself the unit, the indivisible atom of existence.
Socialism, then communism, then nihilism, follow in inevitable
sequence. That even the Far Oriental, with all his numbing
impersonality, has not touched this goal may at least suggest that
individuality is a fact.
But first, what do we know about its existence ourselves?
Very early in the course of every thoughtful childhood an event
takes place, by the side of which, to the child himself, all other
events sink into insignificance. It is not one that is recognized
and chronicled by the world, for it is wholly unconnected with
action. No one but the child is aware of its occurrence, and he
never speaks of it to others. Yet to that child it marks an epoch.
So intensely individual does it seem that the boy is afraid to avow
it, while in reality so universal is it that probably no human being
has escaped its influence. Though subjective purely, it has more
vividness than any external event; and though strictly intrinsic to
life, it is more startling than any accident of fate or fortune.
This experience of the boy's, at once so singular and yet so general,
is nothing less than the sudden revelation to him one day of the
fact of his own personality.
Somewhere about the time when sensation is giving place to
sensitiveness as the great self-educator, and the knowledge gained
by the five bodily senses is being fused into the wisdom of that
mental one we call common sense, the boy makes a discovery akin to
the act of waking up. All at once he becomes conscious of himself;
and the consciousness has about it a touch of the uncanny. Hitherto
he has been aware only of matter; he now first realizes mind.
Unwarned, unprepared, he is suddenly ushered before being, and
stands awe-struck in the presence of--himself.
If the introduction to his own identity was startling, there is
nothing reassuring in the feeling that this strange acquaintanceship
must last. For continue it does. It becomes an unsought intimacy he
cannot shake off. Like to his own shadow he cannot escape it.
To himself a man cannot but be at home. For years this alter ego
haunts him, for he imagines it an idiosyncrasy of his own, a morbid
peculiarity he dare not confide to any one, for fear of being
thought a fool. Not till long afterwards, when he has learned to
live as a matter of course with his ever-present ghost, does he
discover that others have had like familiars themselves.
Sometimes this dawn of consciousness is preceded by a long twilight
of soul-awakening; but sometimes, upon more sensitive and subtler
natures, the light breaks with all the suddenness of a sunrise at
the equator, revealing to the mind's eye an unsuspected world of
self within. But in whatever way we may awake to it, the sense of
personality, when first realized, appears already, like the fabled
Goddess of Wisdom, full grown in the brain. From the moment when we
first remember ourselves we seem to be as old as we ever seem to
others afterwards to become. We grow, indeed, in knowledge, in
wisdom, in experience, as our years increase, but deep down in our
heart of hearts we are still essentially the same. To be sure,
people pay us more deference than they did, which suggests a doubt
at times whether we may not have changed; small boys of a succeeding
generation treat us with a respect that causes us inwardly to smile,
as we think how little we differ from them, if they but knew it.
For at bottom we are not conscious of change from that morning, long
ago, when first we realized ourselves. We feel just as young now as
we felt old then. We are but amused at the world's discrimination
where we can detect no difference.
Every human being has been thus "twice born": once as matter, once
as mind. Nor is this second birth the birthright only of mankind.
All the higher animals probably, possibly even the lower too, have
experienced some such realization of individual identity. However
that may be, certainly to all races of men has come this revelation;
only the degree in which they have felt its force has differed
immensely. It is one thing to the apathetic, fatalistic Turk, and
quite another matter to an energetic, nervous American. Facts,
fancies, faiths, all show how wide is the variance in feelings.
With them no introspective [greek]cnzhi seauton overexcites the
consciousness of self. But with us; as with those of old possessed
of devils, it comes to startle and stays to distress. Too apt is it
to prove an ever-present, undesirable double. Too often does it
play the part of uninvited spectre at the feast, whose presence no
one save its unfortunate victim suspects. The haunting horror of
his own identity is to natures far less eccentric than Kenelm
Chillingly's only too common a curse. To this companionship,
paradoxical though it sound, is principally due the peculiar
loneliness of childhood. For nothing is so isolating as a
persistent idea which one dares not confide.
And yet,--stranger paradox still,--was there ever any one
willing to exchange his personality for another's? Who can imagine
foregoing his own self? Nay, do we not cling even to its outward
appearance? Is there a man so poor in all that man holds dear that
he does not keenly resent being accidentally mistaken for his
neighbor? Surely there must be something more than mirage in this
deep-implanted, widespread instinct of human race.
But however strong the conviction now of one's individuality, is
there aught to assure him of its continuance beyond the confines of
its present life? Will it awake on death's morrow and know itself,
or will it, like the body that gave it lodgment, disintegrate again
into indistinguishable spirit dust? Close upon the heels of the
existing consciousness of self treads the shadow-like doubt of its
hereafter. Will analogy help to answer the grewsome riddle of the
Sphinx? Are the laws we have learned to be true for matter true also
for mind? Matter we now know is indestructible; yet the form of it
with which we once were so fondly familiar vanishes never to return.
Is a like fate to be the lot of the soul? That mind should be
capable of annihilation is as inconceivable as that matter should
cease to be. Surely the spirit we feel existing round about us on
every side now has been from ever, and will be for ever to come.
But that portion of it which we each know as self, is it not like to a
drop of rain seen in its falling through the air? Indistinguishable
the particle was in the cloud whence it came; indistinguishable it
will become again in the ocean whither it is bound. Its personality
is but its passing phase from a vast impersonal on the one hand to
an equally vast impersonal on the other. Thus seers preached in the
past; so modem science is hinting to-day. With us the idea seems the
bitter fruit of material philosophy; by them it was looked upon as
the fairest flower of their faith. What is dreaded now as the
impious suggestion of the godless four thousand years ago was
reverenced as a sacred tenet of religion.
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