The second historical fact is recent. After centuries of physical and social isolation, such as is favorable to the production of a specific type, there has followed a half-century of rapid changes due to altered relations toward foreign influences. These recent changes have, how ever, as yet resulted in very little admixture of foreign blood. They have, therefore, produced no essential alteration in the temperament or the hereditary mental characteristics of the Japanese as a people. But they have, of course, produced important alterations in the physical and social manifestations of these characteris tics. On the one hand, they have had the ef fect to confuse, for the time being, the minds, the morals, the ancestral ideas and customs of the people; and to make upon the superficial observer a variety of bewildering and contra dictory impressions. On the other hand, this period of rapid change is defining, deepening and developing the Japanese temperament, and of course, also, the essential mental and moral characteristics which rest upon it as on their base.
The third important historical fact is the development of the feudal system. This re sulted in making the economic and social condi tion of Japan down to its modern era much more like that of medieval Europe than of China. Indeed, we are almost justified in de nying that Japan has ever been an Oriental na tion in the fullest meaning of the words.
When we come to inquire, therefore, as to what term shall be employed to designate the temperament of the Japanese, the answer may be given with a rather unusual degree of con fidence. For the ethnographic conditions and the historical influences have combined to give the nation a distinct quality. This tempera ment is predominatingly sentimental, although with considerable infusion of the choleric. The sentimental temperament is characterized by great sensitiveness to all kinds of impressions, especially those of a sensuous and esthetical or der; by varied, strong and oftentimes sudden and even conflicting and tumultuous reactions ; by an eager but somewhat naive intellectual curiosity and a versatile gift of adaptability; by a lively, picturesque and concrete, but usually not profound or scientifically controlled imagi nation; by warm, responsive, but rather un stable emotions; by a splendid power to attain, under trying emergencies, the heights of .moral and religious devotion and achievement, and yet a tendency to carry to extremes certain particulars and thus to miss somewhat of the controlling principle of' an ethical harmony; and by a disposition to deal with moral and religious truths as though they are matters worthy of only a passing curiosity rather than concerned with the profounder insights and most important activities of human life.
If now we adopt this description as in the main characterizing the racial temperament of the Japanese people at large, we must at once remind ourselves of certain important mod ifying considerations. As among every gifted
and highly developed people, so in Japan, there are many examples of other temperaments or temperamental mixtures. And indeed, no so called "race temperament" can remain pure. That intense and persistent energy, combined with intellectual sagacity and the power to or ganize and to achieve practical results by fol lowing up one's purposes with a consistent and unswerving determination, which is character istic of the choleric temperament, has been well marked in the case of many of the Feat men of Japan. When instructed and disciplined, as it was under the old regime among the Samurai, it produced many splendid examples of a note worthy and admirable but one-sided chivalry. It produced a system of nicely adjusted cus toms and manners, where appropriateness and a subtly adapted symbolism ruled over the con duct of classes and gave an air of good breed ing to all. And nowhere else, in the world's history, have there been more notable examples of supreme, self-sacrificing devotion to persons and to a chosen cause.
On the other hand, it must be admitted that a certain instability, or lack of steadiness, often amounting to fickleness, and a tendency to re verse movement, to change opinions, parties and sides, even to entertain contradictory plans and purposes, characterize the sentimental tempera ment. In this way must we account for the ex tremely puzzling nature, to the man of a dif ferent race temperament and of Occidental cul ture, of many of the mental characteristics and of much of the conduct of the Japanese people as a whole. It is peculiarly difficult to know the Japanese at all thoroughly, and to maintain to ward them an attitude of indifference.
With regard to the fundamental appetites and passions of human nature, no well-defined difference appears between the Japanese and the inhabitants of the different highly civilized parts of Europe and America. Centuries of an almost complete disuse of animal food, combined with the climatic influences of those regions of Japan that are the most populous, may have had some important effect in bringing about an absence of the manifestation of physical vigor and of that energetic and direct way of going about the business in hand which characterizes the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races. The philoso phy of life which was introduced by Buddhism, and which has, together with Confucian ethics, influenced the upper classes and filtered down through the lower orders of the people, has also been of great importance. In such matters, in Japan, as everywhere else, economic consider ations are also very powerful. Whatever the causes may have been, the Japanese have never been, and are not now, so much given to glut tony and to intemperance as the people of nothern Europe.