The discovery of this set of facts, slowly emerging into consciousness, is the culmination of all past history, and the beginning of all man’s higher life.  It is the turning point in the history of the human race.  Every onward step in man’s preceding life, whereby he has united to form higher and higher groups, has been leading onward and upward to the development of strong personality, to the development of individuals competent to make this great discovery.  But this is not enough.

The next step is to discover the fact, and to believe it, that this infinite life is the potential possession of every member of the community; that the bank account which the community has been storing up for ages is for the use not only of a favored few, but also of the masses.  That since every man is a man, he has an infinite and an eternal life and value, which no accident of birth, or poverty, can annul.  Each man needs to discover himself.  The great problem, then, which confronts progressive communal evolution is to take this enlarged definition of the individual and scatter it broadcast over the land, persuading all men to accept and believe it both for themselves and for others.  This definition must be carried in full confidence to the lowest, meanest, most ignorant man that lives in the community, and by its help this down-most man must be shown his birthright, and in the light of it he must be raised to actual manhood.  He must “come to himself”; only so can he qualify for his heritage.

After a nation, therefore, has secured a large degree of unity, of the confederated tribal type, the step which must be taken, before it can proceed to more complete nationalization even, is, first, the discovery of personality as the real and essential characteristic of men, and secondly the discovery that high-grade personality may and can and must be developed in all the members of the community.  In proportion as the members of the community become conscious persons, fully self-conscious and self-regulating, fully imbued with the idea and the spirit of true personality, of communo-individualism, in that proportion will the community be unified and centralized, as well as capable of the most complex and differentiated internal structure.  The strength of such a nation will be indefinitely greater than that of any other less personalized and so less communalized nation.

XXX

ARE THE JAPANESE IMPERSONAL?

Few phases of the Japanese character have proved so fascinating to the philosophical writer on Japan as that of the personality of this Far Eastern people.  From the writings of Sir Rutherford Alcock, the first resident English minister in Japan, down to the last publication that has come under my eye, all have something to say on this topic.  One writer, Mr. Percival Lowell, has devoted an entire volume to it under the title of “The Soul of the Far East,” in