personal pronouns have arisen in other languages. Did
the primitive Occidental man produce them outright from the moment
that he discovered himself? Far from it. There are abundant reasons
for believing that every personal pronoun is a degenerate or, if you
prefer, a developed noun. Pronouns are among the latest products of
language, and, in the sphere of language, are akin to algebraic
symbols in the sphere of mathematics or to a machine in the sphere of
labor. A pronoun, whether personal, demonstrative, or relative, is a
wonderful linguistic invention, enabling the speaker to carry on long
trains of unbroken thought. Its invention was no more connected with
the sense of self, than was the invention of any labor-saving device.
The Japanese language is even more defective for lack of relative
pronouns than it is for lack of personal pronouns. Shall we argue from
this that the Japanese people have no sense of relation? Of course
personal pronouns could not arise without or before the sense of self,
but the problem is whether the sense of self could arise without or
exist before that particular linguistic device, the personal pronoun?
On this problem the Japanese language and civilization throw
conclusive light.

The fact is that the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon and Japanese peoples
parted company so long ago that in the course of their respective
linguistic evolutions, not only have all common terms been completely
eliminated, but even common methods of expression. The so-called
Indo-European races hit upon one method of sentence structure, a
method in which pronouns took an important part and the personal
pronoun was needed to express the personal element, while the Japanese
hit upon another method which required little use of pronouns and
which was able to express the personal element wholly without the
personal pronoun. The sentence structure of the two languages is thus
radically different.

Now the long prevalent feudal social order has left its stamp on the
Japanese language no less than on every other feature of Japanese
civilization. Many of the quasi personal pronouns are manifestly of
feudal parentage. Under the new civilization and in contact with
foreign peoples who can hardly utter a sentence without a personal
pronoun, the majority of the old quasi personal pronouns are dropping
out of use, while those in continued use are fast rising to the
position of full-fledged personal pronouns. This, however, is n