is of necessity sunk out of sight in the demands of the community.  This secures indeed a species of altruism, but of a relatively low order.  It is communal altruism which nature compels on pain of extermination.  This, however, is very different from the altruism of a high religious experience and conscious ethical devotion.  This latter is volitional, the product of character.  This altruism can arise chiefly in a social order where individualism to a large extent has gained sway.  It is this variety of altruism that characterizes the West, so far as the West is altruistic.  But on the other hand, in a social order in which individualism has full swing, the extreme of egoistic selfishness can also find opportunity for development.  It is accordingly in the West that extreme selfishness, the most odious of sins, is seen at its best, or rather its worst.

So again we see that selfish aggressiveness and an exalted consciousness of one’s individuality or separateness are not necessary marks of developed personality, nor their opposite the marks of undeveloped personality—­so-called “impersonality.”  On the contrary, the reverse statement would probably come nearer the truth.  He who is intensely conscious of the great unities of nature and of human nature, of the oneness that unites individuals to the nation and to the race, and who lives a corresponding life of goodness and kindness, is by far the more developed personality.  But the manifestations of personality will vary much with the nature of the social order.  This may change with astonishing rapidity.  Such a change has come over the social order of the Japanese nation during the past thirty years, radically modifying its so-called impersonal features.  Their primitive docility, their politeness, their marriage customs, their universal adoption of Chinese thoughts, language, and literature, and now, in recent times, their rejection of the Chinese philosophy and science, their assertiveness in Korea and China and their aggressive attitude toward the whole world—­all these multitudinous changes and complete reversals of ideals and customs, point to the fact that the former characteristics of their civilization were not “impersonal,” but communal, and that they rested on social development rather than on inherent nature or on deficient mental differentiation.

A common illustration of Japanese “impersonality,” depending for its force wholly on invention, is the deficiency of the Japanese language in personal pronouns and its surplus of honorifics.  At first thought this argument strikes one as very strong, as absolutely invincible indeed.  Surely, if there is a real lack of personal pronouns, is not that proof positive that the people using the language, nay, the authors of the language, must of necessity be deficient in the sense of personality?  And if the verbs in large numbers are impersonal, does not that clinch the matter?  But further consideration of the argument and its illustrations gradually shows its weakness.