[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.]

THE END