tics that has
enabled Japan so quickly to assimilate many elements of an alien
civilization.

Yet this flexibility of mind and sensitiveness to changed conditions
find some apparently striking exceptions. Notable among these are the
many customs and appliances of foreign nations which, though adopted
by the people, have not been completely modified to suit their own
needs. In illustration is the Chinese ideograph, for the learning of
which even in the modern common-school reader, there is no arrangement
of the characters in the order of their complexity. The possibility of
simplifying the colossal task of memorizing these uncorrelated
ideographs does not seem to have occurred to the Japanese; though it
is now being attempted by the foreigner. Perhaps a partial explanation
of this apparent exception to the usual flexibility of the people in
meeting conditions may be found in their relative lack of originality.
Still I am inclined to refer it to a greater sensitiveness of the
Japanese to the personal and human, than to the impersonal and
physical environment.

The customary explanation of the group of characteristics considered
in this chapter is that they are innate, due to brain and nerve
structure, and acquired by each generation through biological
heredity. If closely examined, however, this is seen to be no
explanation at all. Accepting the characteristics as empirical
inexplicable facts, the real problem is evaded, pushed into
prehistoric times, that convenient dumping ground of biological,
anthropological, and sociological difficulties.

Japanese flexibility, imitativeness, and sensitiveness to environment
are to be accounted for by a careful consideration of the national
environment and social order. Modern psychology has called attention
to the astonishing part played by imitation, conscious and
unconscious, in the evolution of the human race, and in the
unification of the social group. Prof. Le Tarde goes so far as to make
this the fundamental principle of human evolution. He has shown that
it is ever at work in the life of every human being, modifying all his
thoughts, acts, and feelings. In the evolution of civilization the
rare man thinks, the millions imitate.

A slight consideration of the way in which Occidental lands have
developed their civilization will convince anyone that imitation has
taken the leading part. Japan, therefore, is not unique in this
respect. Her periods of wholesale imitation hav