So in regard to all the aspects of business morality, it must be admitted that, from the Occidental standpoint, Old Japan was very deficient.  But it must also be stated that new ideals are rapidly forming.  Buying and selling with a view to making profit, though not unknown in Old Japan, was carried on by a despised section of the community.  Compared with the present, the commercial community of feudal times was mean and small.  Let us note somewhat in detail the attitude of the samurai toward the trader in olden times, and the ideals they reveal.

The pursuit of business was considered necessarily degrading, for he who handled money was supposed to be covetous.  The taking of profit was thought to be ignoble, if not deceitful.  They who condescended to such an occupation were accordingly despised and condemned to the lowest place in the social scale.  These ideas doubtless helped to make business degrading; traders were doubtless sordid and covetous and deceitful.  In the presence of the samurai they were required to take the most abject postures.  In addressing him, they must never stand, but must touch the ground with their foreheads; while talking with him they must remain with their hands on the ground.  Even the children of samurai always assumed the lordly attitude toward tradesmen.  The sons of tradesmen might not venture into a quarrel with the sons of samurai, for the armed children of the samurai were at liberty to cut down and kill the children of the despicable merchant, should they insult or even oppose them.

All this, however, has passed away.  Commerce is now honored; trade and manufacture are recognized not only as laudable, but as the only hope of Japan for the future.  The new social order is industrial and commercial.  The entire body of the former samurai, now no longer maintaining their distinctive name, are engaged in some form of business.  Japan is to-day a nation of traders and farmers.  Accompanying the changes in the social order, new standards as to honesty and business integrity are being formulated and enforced.[BJ]

XXIII

MORAL IDEALS

(Continued)

An Occidental is invariably filled with astonishment on learning that a human being, as such, had no value in Old Japan.  The explanation lies chiefly in the fact that the social order did not rest on the inherent worth of the individual.  As in all primitive lands and times, the individual was as nothing compared to the family and the tribe.  As time went on, this principle took the form of the supreme worth of the higher classes in society.  Hence arose the liberty allowed the samurai of cutting down, in cold blood, a beggar, a merchant, or a farmer on the slightest provocation, or simply for the purpose of testing his sword.

Japanese social and religious philosophy had not yet discovered that the individual is of infinite worth in himself, apart from all considerations of his rank in society.  As we have seen, the absence of this idea from Japanese civilization resulted in various momentous consequences, of which the frequency of murder and suicide is but one.