The Soul of the Far East(远东的灵魂)

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The Soul of the Far East

by Percival Lowell

The Soul of the Far East

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--

The Soul of the Far East

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;

The Soul of the Far East

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

The Soul of the Far East

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

The Soul of the Far East

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

The Soul of the Far East

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

The Soul of the Far East

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

The Soul of the Far East

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

The Soul of the Far East

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

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TheSouloftheFarEast1TheSouloftheFarEastbyPercivalLowellTheSouloftheFarEast2CHAPTER1.Individuality.TheboyishbeliefthatontheothersideofourglobeallthingsareofnecessityupsidedownisstartlinglybroughtbacktothemanwhenhefirstsetsfootatYokohama.Ifhisinitialglancedoesnot,tobesure,disclosethenativesintheevery-...

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The Soul of the Far East(远东的灵魂)

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