On the subject of religion he has much to say. Shintoism, though generally held by the people, and causing great numbers of them to go as pilgrims to the sacred places on mountain tops, he regards as not really a religion. That is the reason it is not inconsistent with Buddhism. “It is not simply that the two contrive to live peaceably together; they are actually both of them implicitly believed by the same individual. Millions of Japanese are good Buddhists and good Shintoists at the same time. That such a combination should be possible is due to the essential difference in the character of the two beliefs. The one is extrinsic, the other intrinsic, in its relations to the human soul. Shintoism tells a man but little about himself and his hereafter; Buddhism, little but about himself and what he may become. In examining Far Eastern religion, therefore, for personality, or the reverse, we may dismiss Shintoism as having no particular bearing upon the subject.” Turning to the other system he says: “At first sight Buddhism is much more like Christianity than those of us who stay at home and speculate upon it commonly appreciate. As a system of philosophy it sounds exceedingly foreign, but it looks unexpectedly familiar as a faith.” After dwelling upon the resemblances in the popular attitude, he continues: “But behind all this is the religion of the few,—of those to whom sensuous forms cannot suffice to represent super-sensuous cravings; whose god is something more than an anthropomorphic creation; to whom worship means not the cramping of the body, but the expansion of the soul.”... “In relation to one’s neighbor the two beliefs are kin, but as regards one’s self, as far apart as the West is from the East. For here, at this idea of self, we are suddenly aware of standing on the brink of a fathomless abyss, gazing giddily down into that great gulf which divides Buddhism from Christianity. We cannot see the bottom. It is a separation more profound than death; it seems to necessitate annihilation. To cross it we must bury in its depths all we know as ourselves.
“Christianity is a personal religion; Buddhism, an impersonal one. In this fundamental difference lies the worldwide opposition of the two beliefs. Christianity tells us to purify ourselves that we may enjoy countless aeons of that bettered self hereafter; Buddhism would have us purify ourselves that we may lose all sense of self for evermore.”
At the end of this chapter he sums up his demonstration thus: “We have seen, then, how in trying to understand these peoples we are brought face to face with impersonality in each of those three expressions of the human soul, speech, thought, yearning. We have looked at them first from a social standpoint. We have seen how singularly little regard is paid the individual from his birth to his death. How he lives his life long the slave of patriarchal customs of so puerile a tendency as to be practically impossible to a people really grown up. How he practises a wholesale system of adoption sufficient of itself to destroy any surviving regard for the ego his other relations might have left. How in his daily life he gives the minimum of thought to the bettering himself in any worldly sense, and the maximum of polite consideration to his neighbor. How, in short, he acts toward himself as much as possible as if he were another, and to that other as if he were himself.
“Then, not content with standing stranger-like upon the threshold, we have sought to see the soul of their civilization in its intrinsic manifestations. We have pushed our inquiry, as it were, one step nearer its home. And the same trait that was apparent sociologically has been exposed in this our antipodal phase of psychical research. We have seen how impersonal is his language, the principal medium of communication between one soul and another; how impersonal are the communings of his soul with itself. How the man turns to nature instead of to his fellowman in silent sympathy. And how, when he speculates upon his coming castles in the air, his most roseate desire is to be but an indistinguishable particle of the sunset clouds and vanish invisible as they into the starry stillness of all-embracing space.
“Now what does this strange impersonality betoken? Why are these peoples so different from us in this most fundamental of considerations to any people, the consideration of themselves? The answer leads to some interesting conclusions.”
The final chapter is entitled “Imagination,” for he regards this as the source of all progress, and the far orientals as particularly unimaginative. Their art he ascribes to appreciation rather than originality. They are, he declares, less advanced than the occidentals, their rate of progress is less rapid and the individuals are more alike; and he concludes that unless their newly imported ideas really take root they will vanish “off the face of the earth and leave our planet the eventual possession of the dwellers where the day declines.”
One cannot deny that he made a strong case for the impersonality of the Japanese; and if it be thought that his conclusions therefrom were unfriendly it must be remembered that he had a deep admiration and affection for that people, wishing them well with all his heart.
Without attempting to survey the reviews and criticisms of the book, which was translated into many languages, it may be interesting to recall the comments of three Europeans of very diverse qualities and experiences. Dr. Pierre Janet, the great French neurologist, said to a friend of the author that as a study of Japanese mentality it seemed to him to show more insight than any other he had ever read on the subject.
The second commentator is Lafcadio Hearn, a very different type of person, given to enthusiasm. He had not yet been to Japan, and “The Soul of the Far East” had much to do with his going there. In his book “Concerning Lafcadio Hearn” George M. Gould says:
“Perhaps I should not have succeeded in getting Hearn to attempt Japan had it not been for a little book that fell into his hands during the stay with me. Beyond question, Mr. Lowell’s volume had a profound influence in turning his attention to Japan and greatly aided me in my insistent urging him to go there. In sending the book Hearn wrote me this letter:
“Gooley!—I have found a marvellous book,—a book of books!—a colossal, splendid, godlike book. You must read every line of it. For heaven’s sake don’t skip a word of it. The book is called “The Soul of the Far East,” but its title is smaller than its imprint.
Hearneyboy
“P.S. Let something else go to H—, and read this book instead. May God eternally bless and infinitely personalize the man who wrote this book! Please don’t skip one solitary line of it, and don’t delay reading it,—because something, much! is going to go out of this book into your heart and life and stay there! I have just finished this book and feel like John in Patmos,—only a d——d sight better. He who shall skip one word of this book let his portion be cut off and his name blotted out of the Book of Life.”