They have seemed to shift about with "every wind of doctrine," and, like the Athenians in Paul's day, have been often attracted by new things. But Dening's defence against this accusation is worthy of notice, and seems quite reasonable. He claims that "this peculiarity is accidental, not inherent"; that there was "no lack of permanence in their laws, institutions, and pursuits in the days of their isolation"; that in recent times "their attention has been attracted by such a multitude of [new] things

that they have found great difficulty in making a judicious selection"; and the rapid changes “have not been usually dictated by mere fickleness, but have resulted from the wish to prove all things.' Chamberlain, likewise, refers to so-called "characteristic traits" that are "characteristic merely of the stage through which the nation is now passing.” And certainly a growing steadfastness of purpose and action is perceptible in many phases of Japanese life.

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The Japanese are pre-eminently an æsthetic people. In all sections, among all classes, art reigns supreme. It permeates everything, great or small. Whatever these people fashion, from the toy of an hour to the triumphs of all time, is touched by a taste unknown elsewhere." 1

The national spirit is excessively strong in Japan, and has been made powerful by centuries of development. Every Japanese is born, lives, and dies for

1 For particulars on this point, see chapter on "Esthetic Japan."

his country. Loyalty is the highest virtue; and Yamato-damashii (Japan spirit) is a synonym too often of narrow and inordinate patriotism. But the vision of the Japanese is broadening, and they are learning that cosmopolitanism is not necessarily antagonistic to patriotism. They used to harp on "The Japan of the Japanese"; later they began to talk about "The Japan of Asia"; but now they wax eloquent over "The Japan of the World."

Filial piety is the second virtue in the Japanese ethics, and is often carried to a silly extreme. The old custom of inkyō made it possible for parents, even while they were still able-bodied, to retire from active work and become an incubus on the eldest son, perhaps just starting out in his life career. But now there is a law that no one can become inkyō before he is sixty years of age. And yet filial piety can easily nullify the law!

Professor George T. Ladd, who has made a special study of the Japanese from the psychological point of view, sums up their "character” as of the "sentimental temperament." 1 The following are suggestive passages:

"This distinctive Japanese temperament is that which Lotze has so happily called the 'sentimental temperament.' It is the temperament characteristic of youth, predominatingly, in all races. It is, as a temperament, characteristic of all ages, of both sexes, and of all classes of population, among the Japanese. But, of course, in

1 See "Scribner's Monthly" for January, 1895.

Japan as everywhere, the different ages, sexes, and classes of society, differ in respect to the purity of this temperamental distinction. Many important individual exceptions, or examples of other temperaments, also

occur.

"The distinguishing mark of the sentimental temperament is great susceptibility to variety of influences. especially on the side of feeling, and independent of clear logical analysis or fixed and well-comprehended principles with a tendency to a will that is impulsive and liable to collapse. Such susceptibility is likely to be accompanied by unusual difficulty in giving due weight to those practical considerations, which lead to compromises in politics, to steadiness in labor, to patience in developing the details of science and philosophy, and to the establishment of a firm connection between the higher life of thought and feeling and the details of daily conduct. On the other hand, it is the artistic temperament, the temperament which makes one 'interesting,' the 'clever' mind, the temperament which has a suggestion of genius at its command.

“Japan is the land of much natural scenery that is pre-eminently interesting and picturesque. It is the land of beautiful green mountains and of luxurious and highly variegated flora. It is the land that lends itself to art, to sentiment, to reverie and brooding over the mysteries of nature and of life. But it is also the land of volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, and typhoons; the land under whose thin fair crust, or weird and grotesque superficial beauty, and in whose air and surrounding waters, the mightiest destructive forces of nature slumber and mutter, and betimes break forth with amazing destructive effect. As is the land, soin many striking respects are the people that dwell in it. The superficial observer, especially if he himself