There are things that cannot wait. You have to rush and run and march if you must fight or take the best place in the market. You strain your nerves and are on the alert when you chase opportunities that are always on the wing. But there are ideals which do not play hide-and-seek with our life; they slowly grow from seed to flower, from flower to fruit; they require in- finite space and heaven’s light to mature, and the fruits that they produce can survive years of in- sult and neglect. The East with her ideals, in whose bosom are stored the ages of sunlight and silence of stars, can patiently wait till the West, hurrying after the expedient, loses breath and stops. Europe, while busily speeding to her en- gagements, disdainfully casts her glance from her carriage window at the reaper reaping his harvest in the field, and in her intoxication of speed cannot but think him as slow and ever receding backwards. But the speed comes to its end, the engagement loses its meaning and the hungry heart clamours for food, till at last she comes to the lowly reaper reaping his harvest in the sun. For if the office cannot wait, or the buying and selling, or the craving for excitement, love waits NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 65 and beauty and the wisdom of suffering and tlie fruits of patient devotion and reverent meekness of simple faith. And thus shall wait the East till her time comes.
I must not hesitate to acknowledge where Europe is great, for great she is without doubt. We cannot help loving her with all our heart, and paying her the best liomage of our admira- tion, — the Europe who, in her literature and art, pours out an inexhaustible cascade of beauty and truth fertilizing all countries and all time; the Europe who, with a mind which is titanic in its untiring power, is sweeping the height and the depth of the universe, wii\ning her homage of knowledge from the infinitely great and the infinitely small, applying all tlie resources of her great intellect and heart in healing the sick and alleviating those miseries of man which up till now we were contented to accept in a spirit of hopeless resignation; the Europe who is making the earth yield more fruit than seemed possible, coaxing and compelling the great forces of nature into man’s service. Such true greatness must* have its motive power in spiritual strength. For only the spirit of man can defy all limitations, have faith in its ultimate success, throw its search -light beyond the immediate and the F 66 NATIONALISM apparent, gladly suffer martyrdom for ends which cannot be achieved in its lifetime and accept failure without acknowledging defeat. In the heart of Europe runs the purest stream of human love, of love of justice, of spirit of self-sacrifice for higher ideals. The Christian culture of cen- turies has sunk deep in her life’s core. In Europe we have seen noble minds who have ever stood up for the rights of man irrespective of colour and creed; who have braved calumny and insult from their own people in fighting for humanity’s cause and raising their voices against the mad orgies of militarism, against the rage for brutal retaliation or rapacity that sometimes takes possession of a whole people; who are always ready to make reparation for wrongs done in the past by tlieir own nations and vainly attempt to stem the tide of cowardly injustice that flows unchecked because the resistance is weak and innocuous on the part of the injured. There are these knight-errants of modern Europe who have not lost their faith in the disinterested love of freedom, in the ideals which own no geographical boundaries or national self-seeking. These are there to prove that the fountainhead of the water of everlasting life has not run dry in Europe, and from thence she will have her rebirth time after NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 67 time. Only there, where Europe is too con- sciously busy in building up her power, defying her deeper nature and mocking it, she is heaping up her iniquities to the sky, crying for Gods vengeance and spreading the infection of ugli- ness, physical and moral, over the face of the earth with her heartless commerce lieedlessly outraging man’s sense of the beautiful and the good. Europe is supremely good in her benefi- cence where her face is turned to all humanity; and Europe is supremely evil in her maleficent aspect where her face is turned only upon her own interest, using all her power of greatness for ends which are against the infinite and the eternal in Man, Eastern Asia has been pursuing its own path, evolving its own civilization, which was not political but social, not predatory and mechanic- ally efficient but spiritual and based upon all the varied and deeper relations of humanity. The solutions of the life problems of peoples were thought out in seclusion and carried out behind the security of aloofness, whgre all the* dynastic changes and foreign invasions hardly touched them. But now we are overtaken by the outside world, our seclusion is lost for ever. Yet this we must not regret, as a plant should 68 NATIONALISM 68 NATIONALISM never regret when the obscurity of its seed-time is Hbroken. Now the time has come when we must make the world problem our own problem; we must bring the spirit of our civilization into harmony with the history of all nations of the earth; we must not, in foolish pride, still keep ourselves fast within the shell of the seed and the crust of the earth which protected and nourished our ideals; for these, the shell and the crust, were meant to be broken, so that life may spring up in all its vigour and beauty, bringing its offerings to the world in open light.
In this task of breaking the barrier and facing the world Japan has come out the first in the East. She has infused hope in the heart of all Asia. This hope provides the hidden fire which is needed for all works of creation. Asia now feels that she must prove her life by pro- ducing living work, she must not lie passively dormant, or feebly imitate the West, in the infatuation of fear or flattery. For this we offer our thanks to this Land of the Rising •Sun and solemnly ask her to remember that she has the mission of the East to fulfil. She must infuse the sap of a fuller humanity into the heart of modern civilization. She must never allow it to get choked with the noxious NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 69 undergrowth, but lead it up towards light and freedom, towards the pure air and broad space, where it can receive, in the dawn of its day and the darkness of its night, heavens inspiration. Let the greatness of her ideals become visible to all men like her snow-crowned Fuji rising from the heart of the country into the region of the infinite, supremely distinct from its surroundings, beautiful like a maiden in its magnificerit sweep of curve, yet firm and strong and serenely majestic.
II I have travelled in many countries and have met with men of all classes, but never in my travels did I feel the presence of the human so distinctly as in this land. In other great countries signs of man’s power loomed large, and I saw vast organizations which showed efficiency in all their features. There, display and extravagance, in dress, in furniture, in costly entertainments, are startling. They seem* to push you back into a corner, like a poor intruder at a feast; they are apt to make you envious, or take your breath away with amaze- ment. There, you do not feel man as supreme; 70 NATIONALISM 70 NATIONALISM you are hurled against a stupendousness of things that alienates. But in Japan it is not the display of power, or wealth, that is the predominating element. You see everywhere emblems of love and admiration, and not mostly of ambition and greed. You see a people whose heart has come out and scattered itself in pro- fusion in its commonest utensils of everyday life, in its social institutions, in its manners, which are carefully perfect, and in its dealings with things which are not only deft but grace- ful in every movement.
What has impressed me most in this country is the conviction that you have realized nature’s secrets, not by methods of analytical knowledge, but by sympathy. You have known her language of lines, and music of colours, the symmetry in her irregularities, and the cadence in her freedom of movements; you have seen how she leads her immense crowds of things yet avoids all frictions; how the very conflicts in her creations break out in dance and music; how her exuberance has the aspect of the fulness of self-abandonment, and not a mere dissipation of display. You have discovered that nature reserves her power in forms of beauty; and it is this beauty which, like a mother, nourishes all the giant forces at NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 71 her breast, keeping them in active vigour, yet in repose. You have known that energies of nature save themselves from wearing out by the rhythm of a perfect grace, and that she with the tenderness of her curved lines takes away fatigue from the world’s muscles. I have felt that you have been able to assimilate these secrets into your life, and the truth which lies in the beauty of all things has passed into your souls. A mere knowledge of things can be had in a short enough time, but their spirit can only be acquired by centuries of training and self- control. Dominating nature from outside is a much simpler thing than making her your own in love’s delight, which is a work of true genius. Your race has shown that genius, not by acquire- ment, but by creation; not by display of things, but by manifestation of its own inner being. This creative power there is in all nations, and it is ever active in getting hold of men’s natures and giving them a form according to its ideals. But here, in Japan, it seems to have achieved its success, and deeply sunk into the minds of all men, and permeated their muscles*and nerves. Your instincts have become true, your senses keen, and your hands have acquired natural skill. The genius of Europe has given her 72 NATIONALISM 72 NATIONALISM people the power of organization, which has specially made itself manifest in politics and commerce and in co-ordinating scientific know- ledge. The genius of Japan has given you the vision of beauty in nature and the power of realizing it in your life.
All particular civilization is the interpretation of particular human experience. Europe seems to have felt emphatically the conflict of things in the universe, which can only be brought under control by conquest. Therefore she is ever ready for fight, and the best portion of her attention is occupied in organizing forces. But Japan has felt, in her world, the touch of some presence, which has evoked in her soul a feeling of reverent adoration. She does not boast of her mastery of nature, but to her she brings, with infinite care and joy, her offerings of love. Her relationship with the world is the deeper relationship of heart. This spiritual bond of love she has established with the hills of her country, with the sea and the streams, with the forests in all their flowery moods and varied physiognomy of branches; she has taken into her heart all the rustling whispers and sighing of the woodlands and sobbing of the waves; the sun and the moon she has studied in all the modulations of their lights and shades, NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 78 and she is glad to close her shops to greet the seasons in her orchards and gardens and corn- fields. This opening of the heart to the soul of the world is not confined to a section of your privileged classes, it is not the forced product of exotic culture, but it belongs to all your men and women of all conditions. Tliis experience of your soul, in meeting a personality in the heart of the world, has been embodied in your civiliza- tion. It is a civilization of human relationship. Your duty towards your state has naturally assumed the character of filial duty, your nation becoming one family with your Emperor as its head. Your national unity has not been evolved from the comradeship of arms for defensive and offensive purpose, or from partnership in raiding adventures, dividing among each member the danger and spoils of robbery. It is not an out- come of the necessity of organization for some ulterior purpose, but it is an extension of the family and the obligations of the heart in a wide field of space and time. The ideal of “ maitri ” is at the bottom of your culture, — “ maitri ” with men and “ maitri ” with Nature. Ana the true expression of this love is in the language of beauty, which is so abundantly universal in this land. This is the reason why a stranger, like 74 NATIONALISM 74 NATIONALISM myself, instead of feeling envy or humiliation before these manifestations of beauty, these creations of love, feels a readiness to participate in the joy and glory of such revealment of the human heart.
And this has made me all the more appre- hensive of the change which threatens Japanese civilization, as something like a menace to one’s own person. For the huge heterogeneity of the modern age, whose only common bond is useful- ness, is nowhere so pitifully exposed against the dignity and hidden power of reticent beauty as in Japan.
But the danger lies in this, that organized ugliness storms the mind and carries the day by its mass, by its aggressive persistence, by its power of mockery directed against the deeper sentiments of heart. Its harsh obtrusiveness makes it forcibly visible to us, overcoming our senses, — and we bring sacrifices to its altar, as does a savage to the fetich which appears power- ful because of its hideousness. Therefore its rivalry with things that are modest and profound and have the subtle delicacy of life is to be dreaded.
I am quite sure that there are men in your country who are not in sympathy with your NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 75 inherited ideals; whose object is to gain, and not to grow. They are loud in their boast that they have modernized Japan. While I agree with them so far as to say that the spirit of the race should harmonize with the spirit of the time, I must warn them that modernizing is a mere affectation of modernism, just as affectation of poesy is poetizing. It is nothing but mimicry, only affectation is louder than the original, and it is too literal. One must bear in mind that those who have the true modern spirit need not modernize, just as those who are truly brave are not braggarts. Modernism is not in the dress of the Europeans; or in the hideous structures, where their children are interned when they take their lessons; or in the square houses with flat, straight wall-surfaces, pierced with parallel lines of windows, where these people are caged in their lifetime; certainly modernism is not in their ladies’ bonnets, carrying on them loads of incon- gruities. These are not modern, but merely European. True modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. It is independence (if thought and action, not tutelage under European schoolmasters. It is science, but not its wrong application in life, — a mere imitation of our science teachers who reduce it into a supersti- 76 NATIONALISM tion, absurdly invoking its aid for all impossible purposes.
Life based upon mere science is attractive to some men, because it has all the characteristics of sport; it feigns seriousness, but is not pro- found. When you go a-hunting, the less pity you have the better; for your one object is to chase the game and kill it, to feel that you are the greater animal, that your method of destruc- tion is thorough and scientific. And the life of science is that superficial life. It pursues success with skill and thoroughness, and takes no account of the higher nature of man. But those whose minds are crude enough to plan their lives upon the supposition that man is merely a hunter and his paradise the paradise of sportsmen will be rudely awakened in the midst of their trophies of skeletons and skulls.
I do not for a moment suggest that Japan sliould be unmindful of acquiring modern weapons of self- protection. But this should never be allowed to go beyond her instinct of sislf-preservation. She must know that the real power is not in the weapons themselves, but in the man who wields those weapons; and when he, in his eagerness for power, multiplies his weapons at the cost of his own soul, then it NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 77 is he who is in even greater danger than his j enemies.
Things that are living are so easily hurt; therefore they require protection. In nature, life protects itself within its coverings, which are built with life’s own material. Therefore they are in harmony with life’s growth, or else when the time comes they easily give way and arc for- gotten. The living man has his true j)rotection in his spiritual ideals, which have their vital con- nection with his life and grow with his growth. But, unfortunately, all his armour is not living, — some of it is made of steel, inert and meclianical. Therefore, while making use of it, man has to be careful to protect himself from its tyranny. If he is weak enough to grow smaller to fit himself to his covering, then it becomes a process of gradual suicide by shrinkage of the soul. And Japan must have a firm faith in the moral law of existence to be able to assert to herself that the Western nations are following that path of suicide, where they are smothering their humanity under the immense weight of organiza^^ tions in order to keep themselves in power and hold others in subjection.
What is dangerous for Japan is, not the imitation of the outer features of the West, but 78 NATIONALISM [the acceptance of the motive force of the Western nationalism as her own. Her social ideals are already showing signs of defeat at the hands of politics. I can see her motto, taken from science, “ Survival of the Fittest,” writ large at the entrance of her present-day history — ^the motto whose meaning is, “ Help yourself, and never heed what it costs to others ”; the motto of the blind man who only believes in wliat he can touch, because he cannot see. But those who can see know that men are so closely knit that when you strike others the blow comes back to yourself. The moral law, which is the greatest discovery of man, is the discovery of this wonderful truth, that man becomes all the truer the more he realizes himself in others. This truth has not only a subjective value, but is manifested in every department of our life. And nations who sedulously cultivate moral blindness as the cult of patriotism will end their existence in a sudden and violent death. In past ages we had foreign invasions, but they never touched the soul of the people deeply. They were merely the outcome of individual ambitions. The people themselves, being free from the responsibilities of the baser and more heinous side of those adventures, had all the NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 79 advantage of the heroic and the human disciplines derived from them. This developed their unflinching loyalty, their single-minded devotion to the obligations of honour, their power of complete self- surrender and fearless acceptance of death and danger. Therefore the ideals, whose seats were in the hearts of the people, would not undergo any serious change owing to the policies adopted by the kings or generals. But now, where the spirit of the Western nationalism prevails, the whole people is being taught from boyhood to foster hatreds and ambitions by all kinds of means — by the manufacture of half-truths and untruths in history, by persistent misrepresentation of other races and the culture of unfavourable sentiments towards them, by setting up memorials of events, very often false, which for the sake of humanity should be speedily forgotten, thus continually brewing evil menace towards neigh- bours and nations other than their own. This is poisoning the very fountainhead of humanity. It is discrediting the ideals, which were born of* the lives of men who were our greatest and best. It is holding up gigantic selfishness as the one universal religion for all nations of the world. We can take anything else from the 80 NATIONALISM 80 NATIONALISM hands of science, but not this elixir of moral death. Never think for a moment tliat the hurts you inflict upon other races will not infect you, or that the enmities you sow around your homes will be a wall of protection to you for all time to come. To imbue the minds of a whole people with an abnormal vanity of its own superiority, to teach it to take pride in its moral callousness and ill -begotten wealth, to perpetuate humiliation of defeated nations by exhibiting trophies won from war, and using these in schools in order to breed in children s minds contempt for others, is imitating the West where she has a festering sore, whose swelling I is a swelling of disease eating into its vitality.
Our food crops, which are necessary for our sustenance, are products of centuries of selection and care. But the vegetation, which we have not to transform into our lives, does not require the patient thoughts of generations. It is not easy to get rid of weeds; but it is easy, by process of neglect, to ruin your food crops and Jet them revert to their primitive state of wild- ness. Likewise the culture, which has so kindly adapted itself to your soil — so intimate with life, so human — not only needed tilling and weeding in past ages, but still needs anxious work and 81 NATIONALISM IN JAPAN watching. What is merely modern — as science i and methods of organization — can be trans- planted; but what is vitally human has fibres so delicate, and roots so numerous and far- reaching, that it dies when moved from its soil. Therefore I am afraid of the rude pressure of the political ideals of the West upon your own. In political civilization, the state is an abstraction and relationship of men utilitarian, liecause it has no root in sentiments, it is so dangerously easy to handle. Half a century has been enough for you to master this machine; and there are men among you whose fondness for it exceeds their love for the living ideals, which were born with the birth of your nation and nursed in your centuries. It is like a child who, in the excitement of his play, imagines he likes his playthings better than his mother. ‘ Where man is at his greatest, he is un- conscious. Your civilization, whose mainspring is the bond of human relationship, has been nourished in the depth of a healthy life beyond reach of prying self-analysis. But; a mere* political relationship is all-conscious; it is an eruptive inflammation of aggressiveness. It has forcibly burst upon your notice. And the time has come when you have to be roused into full G 82 NATIONALISM consciousness of the truth by which you live, so that you may not be taken unawares. The past has been God’s gift to you; about the present, you must make your own choice.
So the questions you have to put to your- selves are these — “Have we read the world wrong, and based our relation to it upon an ignorance of human nature? Is the instinct of the West right, where she builds her national welfare behind the barricade of a universal dis- trust of humanity? ” You must have detected a strong accent of 'fear whenever the West has discussed the possibility of the rise of an Eastern race. The reason of it is this, that the power by whose help she thrives is an evil power; so long as it is held on her own side she can be safe, while the rest of the world trembles. The vital ambition of the present civilization of Europe is to have the exclusive possession of the devil. All her armaments and diplomacy are directed upon this one object. But these costly rituals for invocation of the evil spirit lead through a path of prosperity to the brink of cataclysm. The furies of terror, which the West has let loose upon God’s world, come back to threaten herself and goad her into preparations of more NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 83 and more frightfulness; this gives her no rest, and makes her forget all else but the perils that she causes to others and incurs herself. To the worship of this devil of politics she sacrifices other countries as victims. She feeds upon their dead flesh and grows fat upon it, so long as the carcasses remain fresh, — but they are sure to rot at last, and the dead will take their revenge, by spreading pollution far and wide and poisoning the vitality of the feeder. Japan had all her wealth of humanity, her harmony of heroism and beauty, her depth of self-control and richness of self-expression; yet the Western nations felt no respect for her till she proved that the bloodhounds of Satan are not only bred in the kennels of Europe but can also be domesticated in Japan and fed with mans miseries. They admit Japan’s equality with themselves, only when they know that Japan also possesses the key to open the floodgate of hell -fire upon the fair earth whenever she chooses, and can dance, in their own measure, the devil dance of pillage, murder jnd ravisl^ ment of innocent women, while the world goes to ruin. We know that, in the early stage of man’s moral immaturity, he only feels reverence for the god whose malevolence he dreads. But 84 NATIONALISM 84 NATIONALISM is this the ideal of man which we can look up to with pride? After centuries of civilization nations fearing each other like the prowling wild beasts of the night-time; shutting their doors of hospitality; combining only for purpose of aggression or defence; hiding in their holes their trade secrets, state secrets, secrets of their armaments; making peace-offerings to each other’s barking dogs with the meat which does not belong to them; holding down fallen races which struggle to stand upon their feet; with their right hands dispensing religion to weaker peoples, while robbing them with their left, — is there anything in this to make us envious? Are we to bend our knees to the spirit of this nationalism, which is sowing broadcast over all the world seeds of fear, greed, suspicion, un- ashamed lies of its diplomacy, and unctuous lies of its profession of peace and good-will and universal brotherhood of Man? Can our minds be free from doubt when we rush to the Western market to buy this foreign product in exchange for our own inheritance? I am aware how difficult it is to know one’s self; and the man who is intoxicated furiously denies his drunkenness; yet the West herself is anxiously thinking of her problems and trying experiments.
NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 85 But she is like a glutton, who has not the heart to give up his intemperance in eating, and fondly clings to the hope that he can cure his nightmares of indigestion by medicine. Europe is not ready to give up her political inhumanity, with all the baser passions of man attendant upon it; she believes only in modification of systems, and not in change of liiearL.
We are willing to buy their machine-made^ systems, not with our hearts, but with our brains. We shall try them and build sheds for them, but not enshrine them in our homes orj temples. There are races who worship the ' animals they kill; we can buy meat from them when we are hungry, but not the worship which goes with the killing. We must not vitiate our children’s minds with the superstition that business is business, war is war, politics is politics. We must know that man’s business has to be more than mere business, and so should be his war and politics. You had your own, industry in Japan; how scrupulously honestl and true it was, you can see by its jiroducts,-#-' by their grace and strength, their conscientious? ness in details, where they can liardly be observed.\ But the tidal wave of falsehood has swept over your land from that part of the world where 86 NATIONALISM 86 NATIONALISM business is business, and honesty is followed merely as the best policy. Have you never felt shame when you see the trade advertise- ments, not only plastering the whole town with lies and exaggerations, but invading the green fields, where the peasants do their honest labour, and the hill-tops, which greet the first pure light of the morning? It is so easy to dull our sense of honour and delicacy of mind with constant abrasion, while falsehoods stalk abroad with proud steps in the name of trade, politics and patriotism, that any protest against their per- petual intrusion into our lives is considered to be sentimentalism, unworthy of true manliness.
; And it has come to pass that the children : of those heroes who would keep their word at 'the point of death, who would disdain to cheat / men for vulgar profit, who' even in their fight would much rather court defeat than be dis- honourable, have become energetic in dealing with falsehoods and do not feel humiliated by gaining advantage from them. And this has been effected by the charm of the word “modern.” But if undiluted utility be modern, beauty is of all ages; if mean selfishness be modern, the human ideals are no new inven- tions. And we must know for certain that NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 87 however modern may be the proficiency which cripples man for the sake of methods and machines, it will never live to be old.
But while trying to free our minds from the arrogant claims of Europe and to help ourselves out of the quicksands of our infatuation, we may go to the other extreme and blind our- selves with a wholesale suspicion of the West. The reaction of disillusionment is just as unreal as the first shock of illusion. We must try to come to that normal state of mind by which we can clearly discern our own danger and avoid it without being unjust towards the source of that danger. There is always the natural temptation in us of wishing to pay back Europe in her own coin, and return contempt for con- tempt and evil for evil. But that again would be to imitate Europe in one of her worst features, which comes out in her behaviour to people whom she describes as yellow or red, brown or black. And this is a point on which we in the East have to acknowledge our guilt and own that our sin has been as great, if not greater, when we insulted humanity by treating with utter disdain and cruelty men who belonged to a particular creed, colour or caste. It is really because we are afraid of our own weak- 88 NATIONALISM 88 NATIONALISM ness, which allows itself to be overcome by the sight of power, that we try to substitute for it another weakness which makes itself blind to the glories of the West. When we truly know the Europe which is great and good, we can effectively save ourselves from the Europe which is mean and grasping. It is easy to be unfair in one’s judgment when one is faced with human miseries, — and pessimism is the result of building theories while the mind is suflTering. To despair of humanity is only possible if we lose faith in truth which brings to it strength, when its defeat is greatest, and calls out new life from the depth of its destruction. We must admit that there is a living soul in the West which is struggling unobserved against the hugeness of the organizations under which men, women and children are being crushed, and whose mechanical necessities are ignoring laws that are spiritual and human, — the soul whose sensibilities refuse to be dulled com- pletely by dangerous habits of heedlessness in dealings with races for whom it lacks natural sympathy. ' The West could never have risen to the eminence she has reached if her strength were merely the strength of the brute or of the machine. The divine in her heart is suffering NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 89 from the injuries inflicted by her hands upon the world, — and from this pain of her higher nature flows the secret balm which will bring healing to those injuries. Time after time she has fought against herself and has undone the chains which with her own hands she had fastened round helpless limbs; and though she forced poison down the throat of a great nation at the point of the sword for gain of money, she herself woke up to withdraw from it, to wash her hands clean Jigain. This shows hidden springs of humanity in spots which look dead and barren. It proves that the deeper truth in her nature, which can survive such a career of cruel cowardliness, is not greed, but reverence for unselfish ideals. It would be altogether unjust, both to us and to Europe, to say that she has fascinated the modern Eastern mind by the mere exhibition of her power. Through the smoke of cannons and dust of markets the! light of her moral nature has shone bright, and she* has brought to us the ideal of ethical freedom, whose foundation lies deeper than social conven. tions and whose province of activity is world-wide^ The East has instinctively felt, even through her aversion, that she has a great deal to learn from Europe, not merely about the materials of 90 NATIONALISM 90 NATIONALISM power, but about its inner source, which is of mind and of the moral nature of man. Europe has been teaching us the higher obligations of public good above those of the family and the clan, and the sacredness of law, which makes society independent of individual caprice, secures for it continuity of progress, and guarantees justice to all men of all positions in life. Above all things Europe has held high before our minds the banner of liberty, through centuries of martyrdom and achievement, — liberty of conscience, liberty of thought and action, liberty in the ideals of art and literature. And because Europe has won our deep respect, she has become so dangerous for us where she is turbulently weak and false, — dangerous like poison when it is served along with our best food. There is one safety for us upon which we hope we may count, and that is, that we can claim Europe herself as our ally in our resistance to her temptations and to her violent encroachments; for she has ever carried her own standard of perfection, by which we can measure her falls and gauge her degrees of failure, by which we can call her before her own tribunal and put her to shame, — the shame which is the sign of the true pride of nobleness.
NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 91 But our fear is, that the poison may be more powerful than the food, and what is strength in her to-day may not be the sign of health, but the contrary; for it may be temporarily caused by the upsetting of the balance of life. Our fear is that evil has a fateful fascination when it assumes dimensions which are colossal, — and though at last it is sure to lose its centre of gravity by its abnormal disproportion, the mischief which it creates before its fall may be beyond reparation.
Therefore I ask you to have the strength of faith and clarity of mind to know for certain that the lumbering structure of modern progress, riveted by the iron bolts of efficiency, which runs upon the wheels of ambition, cannot hold together for long. Collisions are certain to occur; for it has to travel upon organized lines, it is too heavy to choose its own course freely; and once it is off the rails, its endless train of vehicles is dislocated. A day will come when it will fall in a heap of ruin and cause serious ob- struction to the traffic of the world. Do we not see signs of this even now? Does not the voicp come to us, through the din of war, the shrieks of hatred, the wailings of despair, through the churning up of the unspeakable filth which has been accumulating for ages in the bottom of this 92 NATIONALISM 92 NATIONALISM nationalism, — the voice which cries to our soul that the tower of national selfishness, which goes by the name of patriotism, which has raised its banner of treason against heaven, must totter and fall with a crash, weighed down by its own bulk, its flag kissing the dust, its light extin- guished? My brothers, when the red light of conflagration sends up its crackle of laughter to the stars, keep your faith upon those stars and not upon the fire of destruction. For when this conflagration consumes itself and dies down, leaving its memorial in ashes, the eternal light will again shine in the East, — the East which has been the birthplace of the morning sun of man’s history. And who knows if tliat day has not already dawned, and the sun not risen, in the Easternmost horizon of Asia? And I offer, as did my ancestor rishis, my salutation to that sunrise of the East, which is destined once again to illumine the whole world.
I know my voice is too feeble to raise itself above the uproar of this bustling time, and it is ^asy for any street urchin to fling against me the epithet of' “ unpractical.” It will stick to my coat-tail, never to be washed away, effectively excluding me from the consideration of all re- spectable persons. I know what a risk one runs NATIONALISM IN JAPAN 98 from the vigorously athletic crowds in being styled an idealist in these days, when thrones have lost their dignity and prophets have become an anachronism, when the sound that drowns all voices is the noise of the market-place. Yet when, one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama town, bristling with its display of modern miscellanies, I watched the sunset in your southern sea, and saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad hills, — with the great Fujiyama growing faint against the golden hori- zon, like a god overcome with his own radiance, — the music of eternity welled up through the evening silence, and I felt that the sky and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the dayfall are with the poets and idealists, and not with the marketmen robustly contemptuous of all sentiment, — ^that, after the forgetfulness of his own divinity, man will remember again that heaven is always in touch with his world, which can never be abandoned for good to the hounding wolves of the modern era, scenting human blood and howling to the skies.
NATIONALISM IN INDIA NATIONAI.ISM IN INDIA