absence of temporal conjunctions. In Japanese, though nouns can
be added, actions cannot; you can say "hat and coat," but not

"dressed and came." Conjunctions are used only for space, never
for time. Objects that exist together can be joined in speech,

but it is not allowable thus to connect consecutive events.
"Having dressed, came" is the Japanese idiom. To speak otherwise

would be to violate the unities. For a Japanese sentence is a
single rounded whole, not a bunch of facts loosely tied together.

It is as much a unit in its composition as a novel or a drama is
with us. Such artistic periods, however, are anything but

convenient. In their nicely contrived involution they strikingly
resemble those curious nests of Chinese boxes, where entire shells

lie closely packed one within another,--a very marvel of ingenious
and perfectly unnecessary construction. One must be antipodally

comprehensive to entertain the idea; as it is, the idea entertains us.
On the same general plan, the nouns precede the verbs in the

sentence, and are in every way the more important parts of speech.
The consequence is that in ordinary conversation the verbs come so

late in the day that they not infrequently get left out altogether.
For the Japanese are much given to docking their phrases, a custom

the Germans might do well to adopt. Now, nouns denote facts, while
verbs express action, and action, as considered in human speech, is

mostly of human origin. In this precedence accorded the impersonal
element in language over the personal, we observe again the

comparative importance assigned the two. In Japanese estimation,
the first place belongs to nature, the second only to man.

As if to mark beyond a doubt the insignificance of the part man
plays in their thought, sentences are usually subjectless. Although

it is a common practice to begin a phrase with the central word of
the idea, isolated from what follows by the emphasizing particle

"wa" (which means "as to," the French "quant a"), the word thus
singled out for distinction is far more likely to be the object of

the sentence than its subject. The habit is analogous to the use of
our phrase "speaking of,"--that is, simply an emphatic mode of

introducing a fresh thought; only that with them, the practice being
the rule and not the exception, no correspondingly abrupt effect is

produced by it. Ousted thus from the post of honor, the subject is
not even permitted the second place. Indeed, it usually fails to

put in an appearance anywhere. You may search through sentence
after sentence without meeting with the slightest suggestion of such

a thing. When so unusual an anomaly as a motive cause is directly
adduced, it owes its mention, not to the fact of being the subject,

but because for other reasons it happens to be the important word of
the thought. The truth is, the Japanese conception of events is

only very vaguely subjective. An action is looked upon more as
happening than as being performed, as impersonally rather than

personally produced. The idea is due, however, to anything but
philosophic profundity. It springs from the most superficial of

childishconceptions. For the Japanese mind is quite the reverse of
abstract. Its consideration of things is concrete to a primitive

degree. The language reflects the fact. The few abstract ideas
these people now possess are not represented, for the most part, by

pure Japanese, but by imported Chinese expressions. The islanders
got such general notions from their foreign education, and they

imported idea and word at the same time.
Summing up, as it were, in propria persona the impersonality of

Japanese speech, the word for "man," "hito," is identical with,
and probably originally the same word as "hito," the numeral "one;"

a noun and a numeral, from which Aryan languages have coined the only
impersonalpronoun they possess. On the one hand, we have the

German "mann;" on the other, the French "on". While as if to give
the official seal to the oneness of man with the universe, the word

mono, thing, is applied, without the faintest implication of insult,
to men.

Such, then, is the mould into which, as children, these people learn
to cast their thought. What an influence it must exert upon their

subsequent views of life we have but to ask of our own memories to
know. With each one of us, if we are to advance beyond the steps of

the last generation, there comes a time when our growing ideas
refuse any longer to fit the childish grooves in which we were

taught to let them run. How great the wrench is when this supreme
moment arrives we have all felt too keenly ever to forget. We

hesitate, we delay, to abandon the beliefs which, dating from the
dawn of our being, seem to us even as a part of our very selves.

From the religion of our mother to the birth of our boyish first
love, all our early associations send down roots so deep that long

after our minds have outgrown them our hearts refuse to give them
up. Even when reason conquers at last, sentiment still throbs at

the voids they necessarily have left.
In the Far East, this fondness for the old is further consecrated by

religion. The worship of ancestors sets its seal upon the
traditions of the past, to break which were impious as well as sad.

The golden age, that time when each man himself was young, has
lingered on in the lands where it is always morning, and where man

has never passed to his prosaic noon. Befitting the place is the
mind we find there. As its language so clearly shows, it still is in

that early impersonal state to which we all awake first before we
become aware of that something we later know so well as self.

Particularly potent with these people is their language, for a
reason that also lends it additional interest to us,--because it is

their own. Among the mass of foreign thought the Japanese
imitativeness has caused the nation to adopt, here is one thing

which is indigenous. Half of the present speech, it is true, is of
Chinese importation, but conservatism has kept the other half pure.

From what it reveals we can see how each man starts to-day with the
same impersonaloutlook upon life the race had reached centuries

ago, and which it has since kept unchanged. The man's mind has done
likewise.

Footnote to Chapter 4
[1] Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain: The Japanese Language.

Chapter 5. Nature and Art.
We have seen how impersonal is the form which Far Eastern thought

assumes when it crystallizes into words. Let us turn now to a
consideration of the thoughts themselves before they are thus

stereotyped for transmission to others, and scan them as they find
expression unconsciously" target="_blank" title="ad.无意识地；不觉察地">unconsciously in the man's doings, or seek it consciously

in his deeds.
To the Far Oriental there is one subject which so permeates and

pervades his whole being as to be to him, not so much a conscious
matter of thought as an unconscious mode of thinking. For it is a

thing which shapes all his thoughts instead of constituting the
substance of one particular set of them. That subject is art.

To it he is born as to a birthright. Artistic perception is with
him an instinct to which he intuitively conforms, and for which he

inherits the skill of countlessgenerations. From the tips of his
fingers to the tips of his toes, in whose use he is surprisingly

proficient, he is the artist all over. Admirable, however, as is
his manualdexterity, his mentalaltitude is still more to be

admired; for it is artistic to perfection. His perception of beauty
is as keen as his comprehension of the cosmos is crude; for while

with science he has not even a speakingacquaintance, with art he is
on terms of the most affectionate intimacy.

To the whole Far Eastern world science is a stranger. Such nescience
is patent even in matters seemingly" target="_blank" title="ad.表面上；似乎">seeminglyscientific. For although the

Chinese civilization, even in the so-called modern inventions,
was already old while ours lay still in the cradle, it was to no

scientific spirit that its discoveries were due. Notwithstanding
the fact that Cathay was the happy possessor of gunpowder, movable

type, and the compass before such things were dreamt of in Europe,
she owed them to no knowledge of physics, chemistry, or mechanics.

It was as arts, not as sciences, they were invented. And it speaks
volumes for her civilization that she burnt her powder for fireworks,

not for firearms. To the West alone belongs the credit of
manufacturing that article for the sake of killing people instead

of merely killing time.
The scientific is not the Far Oriental point of view. To wish to

know the reasons of things, that irrepressible yearning of the
Western spirit, is no characteristic of the Chinaman's mind, nor is

it a Tartar trait. Metaphysics, a species of speculation that has
usually proved peculiarlyattractive to mankind, probably from its

not requiring any scientific capital whatever, would seem the most
likely place to seek it. But upon such matters he has expended no

imagination of his own, having quietly taken on trust from India
what he now professes. As for science proper, it has reached at his