Folkways. William Graham Sumner
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his anvil wielding a hammer such as no western smith could use without long practice. The carpenter pulls instead of pushing his extraordinary plane and saw. Always the left is the right side, and the right side the wrong. Keys must be turned, to open or close a lock, in what we are accustomed to think the wrong direction." "The swordsman, delivering his blow with both hands, does not pull the blade towards him in the moment of striking, but pushes it from him. He uses it indeed, as other Asiatics do, not on the principle of the wedge, but of the saw."82 In family manners the Japanese are gentle. Cruelty even to animals appears to be unknown. "One sees farmers coming to town, trudging patiently beside their horses or oxen, aiding their dumb companions to bear the burden, and using no whips or goads. Drivers or pullers of carts will turn out of their way, under the most provoking circumstances, rather than overrun a lazy dog or a stupid chicken."83 Etiquette is refined, elaborate, and vigorous. Politeness has been diffused through all ranks from ancient times.84 "The discipline of the race was self-imposed. The people have gradually created their own social conditions."85 "Demeanor was [in ancient times] most elaborately and mercilessly regulated, not merely as to obeisances, of which there were countless grades, varying according to sex as well as class, but even in regard to facial expression, the manner of smiling, the conduct of the breath, the way of sitting, standing, walking, rising."86 "With the same merciless exactitude which prescribed rules for dress, diet, and manner of life, all utterance was regulated both positively and negatively, but positively much more than negatively. … Education cultivated a system of verbal etiquette so multiform that only the training of years could enable any one to master it. The astonishment evoked by Japanese sumptuary laws, particularly as inflicted upon the peasantry, is justified, less by their general character than by their implacable minuteness—their ferocity of detail." "That a man's house is his castle cannot be asserted in Japan, except in the case of some high potentate. No ordinary person can shut his door to lock out the rest of the world. Everybody's house must be open to visitors; to close its gates by day would be regarded as an insult to the community, sickness affording no excuse. Only persons in very great authority have the right of making themselves inaccessible. … By a single serious mistake a man may find himself suddenly placed in solitary opposition to the common will—isolated, and most effectively ostracized." "The events of the [modern] reconstruction strangely illustrate the action of such instinct [of adaptation] in the face of peril—the readjustment of internal relations to sudden changes of environment. The nation had found its old political system powerless before the new conditions, and it transformed that system. It had found its military organization incapable of defending it, and it reconstructed that organization. It had found its educational system useless in the presence of unforeseen necessities, and it had replaced that system, simultaneously crippling the power of Buddhism, which might otherwise have offered serious opposition to the new developments required."87 To this it must be added that people who have had commercial and financial dealings with Japanese report that they are untruthful and tricky in transactions of that kind. If they cannot "reform" these traits there will be important consequences of them in the developments of the near future.
77. Chinese ethos. It is evident that we have in the Japanese a case of an ethos, from the habits of artisans to the manners of nobles and the military system, which is complete, consistent, authoritative, and very different from our own. A similar picture of the Chinese might be drawn, from which it would appear that they also have a complete and firm ethos, which resembles in general the Japanese, but has its individual traits and characteristic differences.88 The ethos of the Japanese, from the most ancient times, has been fundamentally militant. That of the Chinese is industrial and materialistic.
78. Hindoo ethos. The Hindoos, again, have a strongly marked ethos. They have a name for it—kharma, which Nivedita says might be translated "national righteousness." It "applies to that whole system of complex action and interaction on planes moral, intellectual, economic, industrial, political, and domestic, which we know as India, or the national habit. … By their attitude to it, Pathan, Mogul, and Englishman are judged, each in his turn, by the Indian peasantry."89 The ethos of one group always furnishes the standpoint from which it criticises the ways of any other group.
79. European ethos. We are familiar with the notion of "national character" as applied to the nations of Europe, but these nations do not have each an ethos. There is a European ethos, for the nations have so influenced each other for the last two thousand years that there is a mixed ethos which includes local variations. The European kharma is currently called Christian. In the ancient world Egypt and Sparta were the two cases of groups with the firmest and best-defined ethos. In modern European history the most marked case is that of Venice. In no one of these cases did the elements of moral strength and societal health preponderate, but the history of each showed the great stability produced by a strong ethos. Russia has a more complete and defined ethos than any other state in Europe, although the efforts which have been made since Peter the Great to break down the traditions and limitations of the national ethos, and to adopt the ethos of western Europe, have produced weakness and confusion. It is clear what is the great power of a strong ethos. The ethos of any group deserves close study and criticism. It is an overruling power for good or ill. Modern scholars have made the mistake of attributing to race much which belongs to the ethos, with a resulting controversy as to the relative importance of nature and nurture. Others have sought a "soul of the people" and have tried to construct a "collective psychology," repeating for groups processes which are now abandoned for individuals. Historians, groping for the ethos, have tried to write the history of "the people" of such and such a state. The ethos individualizes groups and keeps them apart. Its opposite is cosmopolitanism. It degenerates into patriotic vanity and chauvinism. Industrialism weakens it, by extending relations of commerce with outside groups. It coincides better with militancy. It has held the Japanese people like a single mailed fist for war. What religion they have has lost all character except that of a cohesive agent to hold the whole close organization tight together.
1 JAI, XX, 140.
2 Lazarus in Ztsft. für Völkerpsy., I, 452.
3 Preuss in Globus, LXXXVII, 419.
4 Princ. of Sociology, sec. 529.
5 Rogers, Babyl. and Assyria, I, 304; Jastrow, in Hastings, Dict. Bible, Supp. vol., 554.
6 Pietschmann, Phoenizier, 154.
7 Pietschmann, Phoenizier, 115.
8 Maspero, Peuples de l'Orient, III, 618.
9 W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 259.
10 Hosea i. 4; 2 Kings ix. 8.