can in no
sense be ascribed to inherent race nature. Thus directly are social
heredity and social order determinative of the literary
characteristics and aesthetic tastes of a nation.

Even more manifestly may Japanese architectural development be traced
to the social heredity derived from China and India. The needs of the
developing internal civilization have determined its external
manifestation. So far as Japanese differs from Chinese architecture,
it may be attributed to Japan's isolation, to the different demands of
her social order, to the difference of accessible building materials,
and to the different social heredity handed down from prehistoric
times. That the distinguishing characteristics of Japanese
architecture are due to the inherent race nature cannot for a moment
be admitted.

We conclude that the Japanese are not possessed of a unique and
inherent aesthetic taste. In some respects they are as certainly ahead
of the Occidental as they are behind him in other respects. But this,
too, is a matter of social development and social heredity, rather
than of inherent race character, of brain structure. If aesthetic
nature were a matter of inherited brain structure, it would be
impossible to account for rapid fluctuations in aesthetic judgment, for
the great inequality of aesthetic development in the different
departments of life, or for the ease of acquiring the aesthetic
development of alien races.[X]

XVI

MEMORY--IMITATION

The differences which separate the Oriental from the Occidental mind
are infinitesimal as compared with the likenesses which unite them.
This is a fact that needs to be emphasized, for many writers on Japan
seem to ignore it. They marvel at the differences. The real marvel is
that the differences are so few and so superficial. The Japanese are a
race whose ancestors were separated from their early home nearly three
thousand years ago; during this period they have been absolutely
prevented from intermarriage with the parent stock. Furthermore, that
original stock was not the Indo-European race. And no one has ventured
to suggest how long before the migration of the ancestors of the
Japanese to Japan their ancestors parted from those who finally became
the progenitors of modern Occidental peoples. For thousands of years,
certainly, the Japanese and Anglo-Saxon races have had no ancestry in
common. Yet so similar is the entire structure and working of their
minds that the ps