your senses keen, and your hands have acquired natural skill. The genius
of Europe has given her people the power of organisation, which has
specially made itself manifest in politics and commerce and in
coordinating scientific knowledge. The genius of Japan has given you the
vision of beauty in nature and the power of realising it in your life.
And, because of this fact, the power of organisation has come so easily
to your help when you needed it. For the rhythm of beauty is the inner
spirit, whose outer body is organisation.
All particular civilisation 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 organising 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, and she is glad to close her
shops to greet the seasons in her orchards and gardens and cornfields.
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. This experience of your soul, in meeting a personality in
the heart of the world, has been embodied in your civilisation. It is
civilisation 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
purposes, or from partnership in raiding adventures, dividing among each
member the danger and spoils of robbery. It is not an outcome of the
necessity of organisation 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. And 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 myself, instead of feeling envy or humiliation before these
manifestations of beauty, these creations of love, feels a readiness to
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