is mightily modified, and in sufficient time is lifted to the grade of the higher in all important respects.  This is a law of great significance.  The Orient is becoming Occidentalized to a degree and at a rate little realized by travelers and not fully appreciated by the Orientals themselves.  They know that mighty changes have taken place, and are now taking place, but they do not fully recognize their nature, and the multitudes do not know the source of these changes.  In so far as the East has surpassed the West in any important direction will the East influence the West.

In saying, then, as we did in our first chapter, that the Japanese have already formed an Occidento-Oriental civilization, we meant that Japan has introduced not only the external and mechanical elements of Western civilization into her new social order, but also its inner and determinative principle—­individualism.  In saying that, as the Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots, so Japan will never become thoroughly Occidentalized, we did not intend to say that she was so Oriental in her physiological nature, in her “race soul,” that she could make no fundamental social transformation; but merely that she has a social heredity that will always and inevitably modify every Occidental custom and conception that may be brought to this land.  Although in time Japan may completely individualize her social order, it will never be identical with that of the West.  It will always bear the marks of her Oriental social heredity in innumerable details.  The Occidental traveler will always be impressed with the Orientalisms of her civilization.  Although the Oriental familiar with the details of the pre-Meiji social order will be impressed with what seems to him the complete Occidentalization of her new civilization and social order, although to-day communalism and individualism are the distinguishing characteristics respectively of the East and the West, they are not necessary characteristics due to inherent race nature.  The Orient is sure to become increasingly individualistic.  The future evolution of the great races of the earth is to be increasingly convergent in all the essentials of individual and racial prosperity, but in countless non-essential details the customs of the past will remain, to give each race and nation distinctive psychic and social characteristics.

XXXVII

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

The aim of the present work has been to gain insight into the real nature of both Japanese character and its modern transformation.

In doing this we have necessarily entered the domain of social science, where we have been compelled to take issue with many, to us, defective conceptions.  Our discussions of social principles have, however, been narrowly limited.  We have confined our attention to the interpretation of those social and psychic characteristics differentiating the Japanese from other races.  Our chief contention has been that these characteristics are due to the nature of the social order that has prevailed among them, and not to the inherent nature of the people; and that the evolution of the psychic characteristics of all races is due to social more than to biological evolution.