What, then, are the facts?  Do the Japanese excel in philosophy, or are they conspicuously deficient?  In either case, is the characteristic due to essential race nature or to some other cause?

We must first distinguish between interest in philosophical problems and ability in constructing original philosophical systems.  In this distinction is to be found the reconciliation of many conflicting views.  Many who argue for Japanese philosophical ability are impressed with the interest they show in metaphysical problems, while those who deny them this ability are impressed with the dependence of Japanese on Chinese philosophy.

The discussions of the previous chapter as to the nature of Japanese education and its tendency to develop the lower at the expense of the higher mental faculties, have prepared us not to expect any particularly brilliant history of Japanese philosophy.  Such is indeed the case.  Primitive Japanese cosmology does not differ in any important respect from the primitive cosmology of other races.  The number of those in Old Japan who took a living interest in distinctly metaphysical problems is indisputably small.  While we admit them to have manifested some independence and even originality, as Professor Inouye urges,[AN] yet it can hardly be maintained that they struck out any conspicuously original philosophical systems.  There is no distinctively Japanese philosophy.

These facts, however, should not blind us to the distinction between latent ability in philosophical thought and the manifestation of that ability.  The old social order, with its defective education, its habit of servile intellectual dependence on ancestors, and its social and legal condemnation of independent originality, particularly in the realm of thought, was a mighty incubus on speculative philosophy.  Furthermore, crude science and distorted history could not provide the requisite material from which to construct a philosophical interpretation of the universe that would appeal to the modern Occidental.

In spite, however, of social and educational hindrances, the Japanese have given ample evidence of interest in metaphysical problems and of more or less ability in their solution.  Religious constructions of the future life, conceptions as to the relations of gods and men and the universe, are in fact results of the metaphysical operations of the mind.  Primitive Japan was not without these.  As she developed in civilization and came in contact with Chinese and Hindu metaphysical thought, she acquired their characteristic systems.  Buddhist first, and later Confucian, metaphysics dominated the thought of her educated men.  In view of the highly metaphysical character of Buddhist doctrines and the interest they have produced at least among the better trained priests, the assertion that the Japanese have no ability in metaphysics cannot be maintained.