d variation from
the moral standard--Standards advancing--Revenge--Modern liberty of
travel--Increase of wealth--Increasing luxury and vice--Increase of
concubinage--Native discussions--Statistics--Business honesty--A
native paper quoted--Some experiences with Christians--Testimony of a
Japanese consul--Difference of gifts to Buddhist and to Christian
institutions--Christian condemnation of Doshisha
mismanagement--Misappropriation of trust funds in the West--Business
honesty and the social order--Fitness of Christianity to the new
social order--A summary--Communal virtues--Individual Vices--The
authority of the moral ideal--Moral characteristics are not inherent,
but social, in nature, 273

XXV. ARE THE JAPANESE RELIGIOUS?

Prof. Pfleiderer's view--Percival Lowell's definition of
religion--Japanese appearance of irreligion due to many
facts--Skeptical attitude of Confucius towards the gods--Ready
acceptance of Western agnosticism--Prof. Chamberlain's assertion that
the Japanese take their religion lightly--Statements concerning
religion by Messrs. Fukuzawa, Kato, and Ito--Statements of Japanese
irreligion are not to be lightly accepted--Incompetence of many
critics--We must study all the religious
phenomena--Pilgrimages--Statistics--Mr. Lowell's criticism of
"peripatetic picnic parties"--Is religion necessarily gloomy?--God and
Buddha shelves universal in Japan--Temples and shrines--Statistics,
286

XXVI. SOME RELIGIOUS PHENOMENA

Stoical training conceals religious emotions--The earnestness of many
suppliants--Buddhistic and Shinto practice of religious ecstasy--The
revolt from Buddhism a religious movement--Muro Kyu-so
quoted--"Heaven's Way"--"God's omnipresence"--Pre-Christian teachers
of Christian truth--Interpretation of modern irreligious
phenomena--Japanese apparent lack of reverence--Not an inherent racial
characteristic--Sketch of Japanese religious
history--Shinto--Buddhism--Confucianism--Christianity--Roman
Catholicism--Protestantism--Religious characteristics are social, not
essential or racial, 296

XXVII. SOME RELIGIOUS CONCEPTIONS

Japanese conceptions as to deity--The number and relation of the gods
to the universe--Did the Japanese have the monotheistic
conception?--Attractiveness of Christian monotheism--Confucian and
Buddhist monism--Religious conception of man--Conception of
sin--Defective terminology--Relation of sin to salvation--"Holy
water"--Holy towels and the spread of disease-