tive characteristics of the West are due, then,
to the high development of individualism. The entire Occidental
civilization is an expression of free will.

The communal nature of the Orient has not systematically given room
for individual progress. The independent, driving man has been
condemned socially. Submission, absolute and perpetual, to parents, to
lord, to ancestors, to Fate, has been the ruling idea of each man's
life. Controlled by such ideas, the easy-going, time-ignoring,
dreaming, contemplative life--if you so choose to call it--of the
Orient is a necessary consequence.

But has this characteristic become congenital, or is it still only
social? Is dreamy appreciation now an inborn racial characteristic of
Oriental mind, while active driving energy is the corresponding
essential trait of Occidental mind? Or may these characteristics
change with the social order? I have no hesitancy whatever in
advocating the latter position. The way in which Young Japan, clad in
European clothing, using watches and running on "railroad time," has
dropped the slow-going style of Old Japan and has acquired habits of
rapid walking, direct clear-cut conversation, and punctuality in
business and travel (comparatively speaking) proves conclusively the
correctness of my contention. New Japan is entering into the hurry and
bustle of Occidental life, because, in contact with the West, she has
adopted in a large measure, though not yet completely, the
individualism of the West.

As time goes on, Japanese civilization will increasingly manifest the
phenomena of will, and will proportionally become assimilated to the
civilization of the West. But the ultimate cause of this
transformation in civilization will be the increasing introduction of
individualism into the social order. And this is possible only because
the so-called racial characteristics are sociological, and not
biological. The transformation of "race soul" therefore does not
depend on the intermarriage of diverse races, but only on the adoption
of new ideas and practices through social intercourse.

We conclude, then, that the only thoroughgoing interpretation of the
differences characterizing Eastern and Western psychic nature is a
social one, and that social differences can be adequately expressed
only by contrasting the fundamental ideas ruling their respective
social orders, namely, communalism for the East and individualism for
the West.

The unity that pervades