satisfactorily account
for the old-time politeness of Japan.

The explanation here offered for the development and decline of
politeness is that they are due to the nature of the social order.
Thoroughgoing feudalism long maintained, with its social ranks and
free use of the sword, of necessity develops minute unwritten rules of
etiquette; without the universal observance of these customs, life
would be unbearable and precarious, and society itself would be
impossible. Minute etiquette is the lubricant of a feudal social
order. The rise and fall of Japan's phenomenal system of feudal
etiquette is synchronous with that of her feudal system, to which it
is due rather than to the asserted "impersonality" of the race mind.

The impersonal theory is amazingly blind to adverse phenomena. Such a
one is the marked sensitiveness of the middle and upper classes to the
least slight or insult. The gradations of social rank are scrupulously
observed, not only on formal occasions, but also in the homes at
informal and social gatherings. Failure to show the proper attention,
or the use of language having an insufficient number of honorific
particles and forms, would be instantly interpreted as a personal
slight, if not an insult.[CS]

Now if profuse courtesy is a proof of "impersonality," as its
advocates argue, what does morbid sensitiveness prove but highly
developed personality? But then arises the difficulty of understanding
how the same individuals can be both profusely polite and morbidly
sensitive at one and the same time? Instead of inferring
"impersonality" from the fact of politeness, from the two facts of
sensitiveness and politeness we may more logically infer a
considerable degree of personality. Yet I would not lay much stress on
this argument, for oftentimes (or is it always true?) the weaker and
more insignificant the person, the greater the sensitiveness. Extreme
sensitiveness is as natural and necessary a product of a highly
developed feudalism as is politeness, and neither is particularly due
to the high or the low development of personality.

Similarly with respect to the question of altruism, which is
practically identified with politeness by expounders of Oriental
"impersonality." They make this term (altruism) the virtual
equivalent of "impersonality"--interest in others rather than in self,
an interest due, according to their view, to a lack of differentiation
of the individual minds; the individuals, tho