What is still more dangerous for Japan is, not this imitation of the
outer features of the West, but the acceptance of the motive force of
the Western civilisation as her own. Her social ideals are already
showing signs of defeat at the hands of politics, and her modern
tendency seems to incline towards political gambling in which the
players stake their souls to win their game. 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 what 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 realises 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, there
had been cruelty and bloodshed, intrigues of jealousy and avarice, but
they never touched the soul of the people deeply; for the people, as a
body, never participated in these games. 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 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 civilisation
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 neighbours and nations other than their own. This is
poisoning the very fountain-head 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 hands of science, but not this elixir of moral death. Never think
for a moment, that the hurts you inflict upon other races will not
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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