The Soul of the Far East | Page 5

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