personality known in the West as well as in the East, murder and suicide, and oftentimes even double suicide, referred to above.  The marriage customs of the Orient are such that hopeless love, though mutual, is far more frequent than in the West, and the death of lovers in each other’s arms, after having together taken the fatal draught, is not rare.  The number of suicides due to hopeless love in 1894 was 407, and the number of murders for the same cause was 94.  Here is a total of over five hundred deaths in a single year, very largely due to the defective marriage system.  Do not these phenomena refute assertions to the effect that the Japanese are so impersonal as not to know what it is to “fall in love”?  If the question of the personality of the Japanese is to be settled by the phenomena of family life and the strength of the sexual emotion, would we not have to pronounce them possessed of strongly developed personality?

XXXI

THE JAPANESE NOT IMPERSONAL

We must now face the far more difficult task of presenting a positive statement in regard to the problem of personality in the Orient.  We need to discover just what is or should be meant by the terms “personality” and “impersonality.”  We must also analyze this Oriental civilization and discover its elementary factors, in order that we may see what it is that has given the impression to so many students that the Orient is “impersonal.”  In doing this, although our aim is constructive, we shall attain our end with greater ease if we rise to positive results through further criticism of defective views.  We naturally begin with definitions.

“Individuality” is defined by the Standard Dictionary as “the state or quality of being individual; separate or distinct existence.”  “Individual” is defined as “Anything that cannot be divided or separated into parts without losing identity....  A single person, animal, or thing.”  “Personality” is defined as “That which constitutes a person; conscious, separate existence as an intelligent and voluntary being.”  “Person” is defined as “Any being having life, intelligence, will, and separate individual existence.”  On these various definitions the following observations seem pertinent.

“Individuality” has reference only to the distinctions existing between different objects, persons, or things.  The term draws attention to the fact of distinctness and difference and not to the qualities which make the difference, and least of all to the consciousness of identity by virtue of which “we feel each one of us at home within himself.”

“Personality” properly has reference only to that which constitutes a person.  As contrasted with an animal a person has not only life, but also a highly developed and self-conscious intelligence, feeling, and will; these involve moral relations toward other persons and religious relations toward God.