l, no speech, no recognition. This
Western soul did not dream that the Eastern soul existed, it was so
different, so totally different.

Religion, as a battle for the right in our sense of right, as a yearning
and a strife for spiritual good and purity, is unknown to the Japanese.

Measured by what religion means to us, the Japanese is a race without
religion. Yet it has a religion, and who shall say that it is not as
great a religion as ours, nor as efficacious? As one Japanese has
written:

"Our reflection brought into prominence not so much the moral as the
national consciousness of the individual. . . . To us the country is more
than land and soil from which to mine gold or reap grain--it is the
sacred abode of the gods, the spirit of our forefathers; to us the
Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a Reichsstaat, or even the
Patron of a Kulturstaat; he is the bodily representative of heaven on
earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy."

The religion of Japan is practically a worship of the State itself.
Patriotism is the expression of this worship. The Japanese mind does not
split hairs as to whether the Emperor is Heaven incarnate or the State
incarnate. So far as the Japanese are concerned, the Emperor lives, is
himself deity. The Emperor is the object to live for and to die for.
The Japanese is not an individualist. He has developed national
consciousness instead of moral consciousness. He is not interested in
his own moral welfare except in so far as it is the welfare of the State.
The honour of the individual, _per se_, does not exist. Only exists the
honour of the State, which is his honour. He does not look upon himself
as a free agent, working out his own personal salvation. Spiritual
agonizing is unknown to him. He has a "sense of calm trust in fate, a
quiet submission to the inevitable, a stoic composure in sight of danger
or calamity, a disdain of life and friendliness with death." He relates
himself to the State as, amongst bees, the worker is related to the hive;
himself nothing, the State everything; his reasons for existence the
exaltation and glorification of the State.

The most admired quality to-day of the Japanese is his patriotism. The
Western world is in rhapsodies over it, unwittingly measuring the
Japanese patriotism by its own conceptions of patriotism. "For God, my
country, and the Czar!" cries the Russian patriot; but in the Japanese
mind there is no d