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
If Japanese children brought up from infancy in American homes, and
sent to American schools from kindergarten days onward, should still
manifest marked deficiencies in powers of analysis and generalization,
as compared with American children, we should then be compelled to
conclude that this difference is due to diverse natal psychic
endowment. Generalizations as to the inherent intellectual
deficiencies of the Oriental are based on observations of individuals
already developed in the Oriental civilization, whose psychic defects
they accordingly necessarily inherit through the laws of social
heredity. Such observations have no relevancy to our main problem. We
freely admit that Oriental civilization manifests striking
deficiencies of development of the higher mental faculties, although
it is not nearly so great as many assert; but we contend that these
deficiencies are due to something else than the inherent psychic
nature of the Oriental individual. Innumerable causes have combined to
produce the Oriental social order and to determine its slow
development. These cannot be stated in a sentence, nor in a paragraph.
In the final analysis, however, the causes which produce the
characteristic features of Japanese social order are the real sources
of the differentiating intellectual traits now characterizing the
Japanese. Introduce a new social heredity,--a new system of
education,--one which relegates a mechanical memory to the
background,--one which exalts powers of rational observation of the
profound causal relations of the phenomena of nature, and which sets a
premium on such observation, analysis, and generalization, and the
results will show the inherent psychic nature of the Oriental to be
not different from that of the Occidental.
XX
PHILOSOPHICAL ABILITY
We are now prepared to consider whether or not the Japanese have
philosophical ability. The average educated Japanese believe such to
be the case. The rapidity and ease with which the upper classes have
abandoned their superstitious faiths is commonly attributed by
themselves to the philosophical nature of their minds. Similarly the
rapid spread of so-called rationalism and Unitarian thought and Higher
Criticism among once earnest Christians, during the past decade, they
themselves ascribe to their interest in philosophical questions, and
to their ability in handling philosophical problems.
Foreigners, on the other hand, usually deny them the possession of
philosophical ability.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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