n and nerve
structure is, nevertheless, more subject to the prevailing social
order than would at first seem possible.

Its rise we have seen was due to that order, and the setting aside of
these characteristics as ideals at least, and thus the bringing into
prominence of more normal and healthy ideals, is due to the coming in
of a new order.

Japanese prosaic matter-of-factness may similarly be shown to have
intimate relations to the nature of the social order. Oppressive
military feudalism, keeping the vast majority of the people in
practical bondage, physical, intellectual, and spiritual, would
necessarily render their lives and thoughts narrow in range and
spiritless in nature. Such a system crushes out hope. From sunrise to
sunset, "_nembyaku nenju_," "for a hundred years and through all the
year," the humdrum duties of daily life were the only psychic stimuli
of the absolutely uneducated masses. Without ambition, without
self-respect, without education or any stimulus for the higher mental
life, what possible manifestation of the higher powers of the mind
could be expected? Should some "sport" appear by chance, it could not
long escape the sword of domineering samurai. Even though originally
possessing some degree of imagination, cringing fear of military
masters, with the continuous elimination by ruthless slaughter of the
more idealizing, less submissive, and more self-assertive individuals
of the non-military classes, would finally produce a dull, imitative,
unimaginative, and matter-of-fact class such as we find in the
hereditary laboring and merchant classes.

Furthermore, Japanese civilization, like that of the entire Orient,
with its highly communalized social order, is an expression of passive
submission to superior authority. Although an incomplete
characterization, there is still much truth in saying that the Orient
is an expression of Fate, the Occident of Freedom. We have seen that a
better contrasted characterization is found in the terms communal and
individual. The Orient has known nothing of individualism. It has not
valued the individual nor sought his elevation and freedom. In every
way, on the contrary, it has repressed and opposed him. The high
development of the individual culminating in powerful personality has
been an exceptional occurrence, due to special circumstances. A
communal social order, often repressing and invariably failing to
evoke the higher human faculties, must express its