The Invention of a New Religion | Page 8

the would-be
student discovers that literary works, even newspapers and ordinary
correspondence, are not composed in it, but in another dialect, partly
antiquated, partly artificial, differing as widely from the colloquial
speech as Latin does from Italian. Make a second hazardous
supposition. Assume that the grammar and vocabulary of this second
indispensable Japanese language have been learnt, in addition to the
first. You are still but at the threshold of your task, Japanese thought
having barricaded itself behind the fortress walls of an extraordinarily
complicated system of writing, compared with which Egyptian
hieroglyphics are child's play. Yet next to nothing can be found out by
a foreigner unless he have this, too, at his fingers' ends. As a matter of
fact, scarcely anyone acquires it--only a missionary here and there, or a
consular official with a life appointment.
The result of all this is that, whereas the Japanese know everything that
it imports them to know about us, Europeans cannot know much about
them, such information as they receive being always belated,
necessarily meagre, and mostly adulterated to serve Japanese interests.
International relations placed--and, we repeat it, inevitably placed--on
this footing resemble a boxing match in which one of the contestants
should have his hands tied. But the metaphor fails in an essential point,
as metaphors are apt to do--the hand-tied man does not realise the
disadvantage under which he labours. He thinks himself as free as his
opponent.

Thus does it come about that the neo-Japanese myths concerning dates,
and Emperors, and heroes, and astonishing national virtues already
begin to find their way into popular English text-books, current
literature, and even grave books of reference. The Japanese governing
class has willed it so, and in such matters the Japanese governing class
can enforce its will abroad as well as at home. The statement may
sound paradoxical. Study the question carefully, and you will find that
it is simply true.
* * *
What is happening in Japan to-day is evidently exceptional. Normal
religious and political change does not proceed in that manner; it
proceeds by imperceptible degrees. But exceptions to general rules
occur from time to time in every field of activity. Are they really
exceptions, using that term in its current sense--to denote something
arbitrary, and therefore unaccountable? Surely these so-called
exceptions are but examples of rules of rarer application.
The classic instance of the invention of a new national religion is
furnished by the Jews of the post-exilic period. The piecing together,
then, of a brand-new system under an ancient name is now so well
understood, and has produced consequences of such world-wide
importance, that the briefest reference to it may suffice. Works which
every critic can now see to be relatively modern were ascribed to
Moses, David, or Daniel; intricate laws and ordinances that had never
been practised-- could never be practised--were represented as ancient
institutions; a whole new way of thinking and acting was set in motion
on the assumption that it was old. Yet, so far as is known, no one in or
out of Palestine ever saw through the illusion for over two thousand
years. It was reserved for nineteenth-century scholars to draw aside the
veil hiding the real facts of the case.
Modern times supply another instance, less important than the first, but
remarkable enough. Rousseau came in the middle of the eighteenth
century, and preached a doctrine that took the world by storm, and soon
precipitated that world in ruins. How did he discover his gospel? He
tells us quite naively:--
All the rest of the day, buried in the forest, I sought, I found there the
image of primitive ages, whose history I boldly traced. I made havoc of
men's petty lies; I dared to unveil and strip naked man's true nature, to

follow up the course of time and of the circumstances that have
disfigured it, and, comparing man as men have made him with man as
nature made him, to demonstrate that the so-called improvements [of
civilisation] have been the source of all his woes, etc. [5]
[Note 5] "Confessions," Book VIII., year 1753.
In other words, he spun a pseudo-history from his own brain. What is
stranger, he fanatically believed in this his pure invention, and, most
extraordinary of all, persuaded other people to believe in it as
fanatically. It was taken up as a religion, it inspired heroes, and enabled
a barefoot rabble to beat the finest regular armies in the world. Even
now, at a distance of a century and a half, its embers still glow.
Of course, it is not pretended that these various systems of thought
were ARBITRARY inventions. No more were they so than the cloud
palaces that we sometimes see swiftly form in the sky and as swiftly
dissolve. The germ of Rousseau's