The case of Japan, again, compares with both that of ancient Greece and that of modern Europe. Its separate civilisation, advantageously placed in an archipelago, drew stimulus early in the historic period from that of China; and, while long showing the Chinese unprogressiveness in other respects, partly in virtue of the peculiar burdensomeness of the Chino-Japanese system of ideograms, it made remarkable progress on the side of art. The recent rapid industrial development (injurious to the artistic life) is plainly a result of the European and American contact; and if only the mechanism of reading and writing be made manageable on the European lines, and the snare of militarism be escaped, the Japanese civilisation may develop mentally as much as it is doing industrially and in military organisation.
It suffices the practical political student, then, to note that progress is thus always a matter of intelligible causation; and, without concerning himself about predicting the future or estimating the sum of possibilities, to take up the tasks of contemporary politics as all other tasks are taken up by practical men, as a matter of adaptation of means to ends. The architect and engineer have nothing to do with calculating as to when the energy of the solar system will be wholly transmuted. As little has the politician to do with absolute estimates of the nature of progress. All alike have to do with the study of laws, forces, and economics.
§ 3
We may now, then, set forth the all-pervading biological forces or tendencies of attraction and repulsion in human affairs as the main primary factors in politics or corporate life, which it is the problem of human science to control by counteracting or guiding; and we may without further illustration set down the principal modes in which these instincts appear. They are, broadly speaking:—
(a) Animal pugnacities and antipathies of States or peoples, involving combinations, sanctified from the first by religion, and surviving as racial aspirations in subject peoples.
(b) Class divisions, economically produced, resulting in class combinations and hostilities within a State, and, in particular, popular desire for betterment.
(c) The tendency to despotism as a cure for class oppression or anarchy; and the spirit of conquest.
(d) The beneficent lure of commerce, promoting intercourse, countered by the commercial jealousies of States.
(e) Designs of rulers, giving rise to popular or aristocratic factions—complicated by questions of succession and loyalism.
(f) Religious combinations, antipathies, and ambitions, international or sectarian. In more educated communities, ideals of government and conduct.