Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And PsychicGulick, Sidney Lewis
History
Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic
Gulick, Sidney Lewis
Japan -- Civilization; Japan -- Social life and customs; National characteristics, Japanese
The parallel between Japanese and Roman apotheosis is interesting. I
can present it no better than by quoting from that valuable
contribution to social and moral problems, "The Genesis of the Social
Conscience," by Prof. H.S. Nash: "Yet Rome with all her greatness
could not outgrow the tribal principle.... We find something that
reveals a fundamental fault in the whole system. It is the apotheosis
of the Emperors. The process of apotheosis was something far deeper
than servility in the subject conspiring with vanity in the ruler. It
was a necessity of the state. There was no means of insuring the
existence of the state except religion. In the worship of the Cæsars
the Empire reverenced its own law. There was no other way in which
pagan Rome could guarantee the gains she had made for civilization.
Yet the very thing that was necessary to her was in logic her
undoing.... The worship of the Emperor undid the definition of
equality the logic of the Empire demanded. Again apotheosis violated
the divine unity of humanity upon which alone the Empire could
securely build."[S]
That the final issue of Japan's experience will be like that of Rome I
do not believe. For her environment is totally different. But the same
struggle of the two conflicting principles is already on. Few, even
among the educated classes, realize its nature or profundity. The
thinkers who adhere to the principle of apotheosis do so admittedly
because they see no other way in which to secure authority for law,
whether political or moral. Here we see the importance of those
conceptions of God, of law, of man, which Christianity alone can give.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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