THE Man must be dull, or at least lacking in
imagination, who reads daily the history of this war in the Far East, and which the civilisation of this Japanese people will ultimately in life without precedent in Asia. Secluded for two thousand By all the analogies to be drawn from history, they should, You might as well say that he was a suicide if he got out of even if they are not a staying people—upon which point we shall have a word to say presently—for the next hundred or instead of compelling his gaolers to drag him out and dress hundred and fifty years advance swiftly; and in what direction him. Such attempts as this to make him appear an accomplice will the advance be P We set aside for the moment all questions o in his own execution are the mere sleight of hand by which of war, though the Japanese may be, and probably intend to b a weak reason endeavours to obtain the authority of a rigid be, a masterful power in Asia, and confine ourselves for the conscience when it is half-conscious of the imposture of which moment to their internal civilisation. They believe them. it is guilty. In all such cases where fads or sophistries try to selves that this will be an industrial one, and they are impose themselves on us as the obligations of conscience, we probably right. With their splendid geographical position, are bound to remember the solemn warning of the words, between Asia and America, yet detached from both; with "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great their aptitude for shipbuilding and sailoring ; with their is that darkness." What can be more enfeebling, more proved capacity for making and using all machinery ; with mystifying to the whole nature, than the sophistry which tries their genius for design and their instinct for manufacture; to manufacture a case of conscience where there is really no with an adequate population and a receptiveness for discipline peremptory background of moral law at all, but at most a greater than that of most Europeans,—there is no reason in plausible counterfeit for it, of the unreality of which the the world why, longing for wealth, they should not make mind is always more or leas conscious ? It is almost impos. it in this way, or why a part of the carrying trade and a large sable to confound with perfect good faith that cowardice part of the commerce of Asia, which has enriched Europe and reluctance to face pain, which leads to suicide, with the from the days of Solomon, should not pass into their hands. calmness that does not shrink from death when the sentence They think it will, and they will strive that it shall, and they of death has been duly passed. The sin of suicide springs will prove, at least, most formidable rivals. Industry never, from want of fortitude, and it is not a want of fortitude, but however, quite absorbs a nation; and while the energetic rather an exercise of fortitude, to accept calmly the will of classes are covering the land with factories, shipbuilding the controlling power which dooms you to death, instead of yards, and foundries—in which latter they will achieve great kicking against the pricks in vain efforts to postpone by a triumphs—they should also make a rushing advance in art few seconds the execution of that doom. The true test and in science and in literature, In the first-named, they in such cases of sophistry is to go back to the motive which will probably achieve only a partial success, architecture should underlie the imaginary sin, and to compare it with being barred off by the earthquaky character of their habitat, the motive which actuates the real man to whom it is im- and sculpture by their indifference to beauty of form ; puted, and the fatuity of the plea will appear at once. Did but in painting, especially landscape-painting, they may Cronin step on to the machine by which he executed himself, achieve miracles. They will learn speedily all Europe knows from cowardice and dread of the misery of life which would of methods, they are born naturalists, and they have an have induced him to take poison in prison if he had had the instinct for colour which never fails them; with their feeling chance, or simply from the conviction that there could by no for mountain scenery, for the flora of their own land, and for passibility be any dignity or any use in attempting a single. birds, they should be the landecape.painters of the world. handed contest with the public authority which bad justly They should be the chemists also. They have done little in doomed him to death P It could hardly have been the former other branches of science, but they display already a mar. motive, since he had already endured all the just ignominy vellous aptitude in some branches of applied chemistry, as due to his crime, and the latter motive was not a criminal or witness their colours and their glazes ; and it is to this that cowardly but a reasonable and manly one. Would Socrates their habits of patient inquiry, exact observation, and eager. have been at all nobler for refusing to drink the hemlock, and ness in experiment are sure to lead them in the end. They compelling the authorities to force it down his throat, than may make marvellous discoveries, some of them in medicine and some in war—Colonel Maurice suspects that they are he was when he accepted it calmly from his gaoler's hands, already using "high explosives" against fortifications in a and made the man feel that it was the law and not he who new way—and outstrip, if not the greater chemists of Europe, was responsible for his death ? Nothing can be more fatal yet the beat of those who apply their science to industrial to moral health than the invention of false conscientious progress. The Japanese, we predict with some confidence, scruples against doing what every honest criminal perfectly will within a few years be lecturing in Europe to crowds of well recognises as mere submission to an authority against eager inquirers into the most profitable methods of applying which he has no right to make war. The very worst friends science. Remember, they have proved that they can acquire of the criminal are those who find him reasons for post- all that Europe has to teach, and seek more knowledge of poning the first step in the right direction,—tbo Plain con- their awn. In art and science they will become as capable as fession to himself of the offence he has committed against the French, and probably manifest much the same merits and the Public conscience, and of the right of that public defects, though the latter will be diminished by their habit of conscience to demand its expiation, so far as expiation is taking infinite trouble.
ever possible. And as to literature ? It is there that the outside observer is most baffled. Literature springs from the mind and the soul, and no European pretends that, as regards the Japanese, lie perfectly understands either the soul or the mind. The upper classes are now practically without a creed, as com- pletely indifferent to the great question of the Whence and Whither as ever Roman nobles were ; and there is no evidence to show whether they will remain in that mood, or will develop a new creed of their own, or with a new application of their strange power of assimilating ideas, will accept Christianity as the creed of the progressive peoples, and run it into some new and unthought-of mould. Judging from the analogy of their past, the latter is the course they will take; but although this course has appealed to many Japanese as the wisest, there is no sign of their adopting it yet, and there are great obstacles in the way, the most serious perhaps being not the superstition of the people, who hold their beliefs very lightly, but the danger of wrecking the great instrument of Japanese progress, their willingness to follow any guidance given them under the sacro-sanct authority of the Mikado, which could hardly survive official recognition that Christianity was substantially true. It is upon the choice they make in the religious direction that the literary development of the Japanese depends; and as to this, there is no ground even for guessing. If they remain as they are, indifferent to the spiritual, then we should expect from them a complete and methodical application of a utilitarian philosophy different from any seen in Europe, because starting not from unconscious Christianity, but from unconscious Paganism. Mill and the rest were full of a pity for the mass of mankind really derived from Christianity, and in furtherance of it preached equality, tolerance, and the duty of diffusing wisdom ; but a utilitarian philosopher who was also a Pagan might preach—we think would preach— very different ideas, might establish a system of caste. culture, and caste-government, the dominant caste being " the truly cultured,"—a system of which the beginnings are already visible in Japan, where a lady can inquire, in absolute sincerity, "What is the use of religion to common folk ; " might think intolerance wiser than tolerance—we do so about many moral ideas — and might place duty to country, or to the work in hand, or to the community, entirely above duty to an invisible power, or to one's own instinctive conscience. The honest defenders of vivisection in Europe do that now. The thoughtful class in an ambitious and active State of pure agnostics, avoiding speculation as to the super- natural, would be almost sure to take that line, and on that line, though a civilisation can be built, a literature cannot. The Athenian aristocrats who for a few years developed such astonishing intellectual power, were in no sense agnostics; they invented supreme supernatural powers like Zeus, Nemesis, Aknanke, rather than remain without sanctions higher than the will of man. The Japanese, too, will be hampered in any great development of their literature by the language difficulty; for they will wish to be understood in Europe and in Asia, and neither Europe nor Asia will acquire their tongue. They must therefore either make their great literature local, which is inconsistent with their passionate desire for universal recognition and respect, or they must adopt a tongue as the tongue of literature which Europe will consent to learn, and that will fetter their native genius, whatever line it takes, to a painful degree. No doubt the Russians have met and have in great part surmounted the same obstacles ; but then the Russians are essentially Europeans, and speak a tongue which is not transmuted when it under- goes translation into French. These thoughts are, of course, mere speculations, for no one can predict the mental move- ment which in Japan must soon follow the political one ; but if no creed attracts the Japanese they must be, as far as we can calculate, a great Pagan people, holding a utilitarian faith, not softened or mellowed by the benevolence and the sympathy which Christianity begets. They are kindly by nature among each other, but towards subjects who resist or outsiders who interfere they are capable of a more than Prussian rigour.
• We have intimated a doubt as to the duration of the Japanese advance, and it is founded upon another doubt. Is their assimilative power, now so wonderfully displayed in so many directions, the power of the whole nation, or only of its upper class? We can give no dogmatic answer, but as far as we understand the facts, the body of the people remain sub- stantially what they have always been, clever, bright, and docile, with a quite singular capacity for carrying out orders exactly, but with no sign in them of original power. They will do anything the cultivated tell them, but they do not greatly change. If that is accurate, and the new civilisation of Japan, with its marvellous power of assimilation, is confined, say, to a hundred thousand families, then its vitality may die as the vitality of the Greek civilisation did. A class rarely mani- fests abnormal force for more than a hundred years, any more than a family does, and the force which the governing class of Japan is now displaying, is surely abnormaL There has been nothing like it in Asia since the Arabs achieved their temporary triumphs in war and in architecture and in chemical research. It may not be so, and the whole Japanese people may be potentially equal to their present rulers, in which case they have a grand reservoir to draw upon ; but it is upon this as yet unresolved question that the duration of Japanese progress mainly depends.
Previous page
