may continue to thrive.  But, on the one hand, it can never become the exclusive religion of any land for it cannot do without and therefore it cannot depose the other religions; and, on the other hand, it must give way before the stronger religion which has both the individual and communal elements combined.  Buddhism, therefore, lacks a vital characteristic of a universal religion.  It may better be called a non-local, or an international religion.  We now see another reason why Buddhism, although found in many Oriental lands, has never annihilated any of the pre-existing religions, but has only added one more to the many varieties already existing.  It is so in Thibet, in China, in Burmah, and in Japan.  And in India, its home, it has utterly died out.

Many of the efforts made by students of comparative religion to classify the various religions, seem to the writer defective through lack of the perception that social and religious evolution are vitally connected.  From this point of view, the classification of religions as communal, individual, and communo-individual, would seem to be the best.

XXXVI

WHAT ARE THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ORIENT?

We have now passed in rather detailed review the emotional, aesthetic, intellectual, moral, and religious characteristics of the Japanese race.  We have, furthermore, given considerable attention to the problem of personality.  We have tried to understand the relation of each characteristic to the Japanese feudal system and social order.

The reader will perhaps feel some dissatisfaction with the results of this study.  “Are there, then,” he may say, “no distinctive Japanese psychical characteristics by which this Eastern race is radically differentiated from those of the Occident?” “Are there no peculiar features of an Oriental, mental and moral, which infallibly and always distinguish him from an Occidental?” The reply to this question given in the preceding chapters of this work is negative.  For the sake, however, of the reader who may not yet be thoroughly satisfied, it may be well to examine this problem a little further, analyzing some of the current characterizations of the Orient.

That Oriental and Occidental peoples are each possessed of certain unique psychic characteristics, sharply and completely differentiating them from each other, is the opinion of scientific sociologists as well as of more popular writers.  An Occidental entering the Orient is well-nigh overwhelmed with amusement and surprise at the antipodal characteristics of the two civilizations.  Every visible expression of Oriental civilization, every mode of thought, art, architecture; conceptions of God, man, and nature; pronunciation and structure of the language—­all seem utterly different from their corresponding elements in the West.  Furthermore, as he visits one Oriental country after another, although he discovers differences between Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, and Hindus, yet he is impressed with a strange, a baffling similarity.