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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
by the ideas of its rulers, even as sand or as water is shaped by wind. And this submissiveness to
reshaping belongs to the old conditions of its soul life, - old conditions of rare unselfishness and perfect
faith. The relative absence from the national character of egotistical individualism has been the saving of
an empire; has enabled a great people to preserve its independence against prodigious odds. Wherefore
Japan may well be grateful to her two great religions, the creators and the preservers of her moral power
to Shinto, which taught the individual to think of his Emperor and of his country before thinking either of
his own family or of himself; and to Buddhism, which trained him to master regret, to endure pain, and to
accept as eternal law the vanishing of things loved and the tyranny of things hated.
To-day there is visible a tendency to hardening, - a danger of changes leading to the integration of just
such an officialism as that which has proved the curse and the weakness of China. The moral results of
the new education have not been worthy of the material results. The charge of want of "individuality," in
the accepted sense of pure selfishness, will scarcely be made against the Japanese of the next century.
Even the compositions of students already reflect the new conception of intellectual strength only as a
weapon of offense, and the new sentiment of aggressive egotism. "Impermanency," writes one, with a
fading memory of Buddhism in his mind, "is the nature of our life. We see often persons who were rich
yesterday, and are poor to-day. This is the result of human competition, according to the law of
evolution. We are exposed to that competition. We must fight each other, even if we are not inclined to
do so. With what sword shall we fight? With the sword of knowledge, forged by education."
Well, there are two forms of the cultivation of Self. One leads to the exceptional development of the
qualities which are noble, and the other signifies something about which the less said the better. But it is
not the former which the New Japan is now beginning to study. I confess to being one of those who
believe that the human heart, even in the history of a race, may be worth infinitely more than the human
intellect, and that it will sooner or later prove itself infinitely better able to answer all the cruel enigmas
of the Sphinx of Life. I still believe that the old Japanese were nearer to the solution of those enigmas
than are we, just because they recognized moral beauty as greater than intellectual beauty. And, by way
of conclusion, I may venture to quote from an article on education by Ferdinand Brunetiere: -
"All our educational measures will prove vain, if there be no effort to force into the mind, and to deeply
impress upon it, the sense of those fine words of Lamennais: 'Human society is based upon mutual
giving, or upon the sacrifice of man for man, or of each man for all other men; and sacrifice is the very
essence of all true society.' It is this that we have been unlearning for nearly a century; and if we
have to put ourselves to school afresh, it will be in order that we may learn it again. Without such
knowledge there can be no society and no education, - not, at least, if the object of education be to form
man for society. Individualism is to-day the enemy of education, as it is also the enemy of social order. It
has not been so always; but it has so become. It will not be so forever; but it is so now. And without
striving to destroy it-which would mean to fall from one extreme into another - we must recognize that,
no matter what we wish to do for the family, for society, for education, and for the country, it is against
individualism that the work will have to be done."
III. A STREET SINGER
A woman carrying a samisen, and accompanied by a little boy seven or eight years old, came to my
house to sing. She wore the dress of a peasant, and a blue towel tied round her head. She was ugly; and
her natural ugliness had been increased by a cruel attack of smallpox. The child carried a bundle of
printed ballads.
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