This old Spanish hymn might have been made expressly about me,—except in No. 3. I should feel more at home with you if I knew you would share my letters with nobody. This is all for yourself only. Ever gratefully, with more than regards,
Lafcadio Hearn.
Dear Chamberlain,—I never liked any letter I got from you more than the last—which brings us closer together. I suppose I have often misread you—being more supersensitive than I ought to be,—and also finding certain of my best friends so differently soul-toned that I am often at a loss to understand hows and whys. But it is curious that we are absolutely at one, after all, on sociological questions, as your letter shows. Undoubtedly the “coming slavery,” predicted by Spencer, will come upon us. A democracy more brutal than any Spartan oligarchy will control life. Men may not be obliged to eat at a public table; but every item of their existence will be regulated by law. The world will be sickened for all time of democracy as now preached. The future tyranny will be worse than any of old,—for it will be a régime of moral rather than physical pain, and there will be no refuge from it—except among savages. But, for all that, the people are good. They will be trapped through their ignorance, and held in slavery by their ignorance; and made, I suppose, in the eternal order, to develop a still higher goodness before they can reach freedom again.
I believe there is no point of your letter in which we are not thoroughly at accord. I have also been inclined to many schools of belief in these matters: I have been at heart everything by turns. It is like the history of one’s religious experiences. And just as when, after emancipating one’s self from the last mesh of the net of creeds, one sees for the first time the value-social and meaning of all, and the moral worth of many,—so in sociological questions, it is by emancipation from faiths in politics that one learns what lies behind all politics,—the necessity of the Conservative vs. the Radical, of the pleb. vs. the aristo. Then, if sympathetic with popular needs one still recognizes the æsthetic and moral value of ranks and orders; or, if belonging to the latter, one learns also to understand that the great, good, unhappy, moral, immoral, vicious, virtuous people are the real soil of all future hope,—the field of the divine in Man.
But for all that, when conditions jar on me, I sometimes grumble and see only evil. What matter? I never look for it as a study. My work—though “no great shakes”—must show you that. At the end of all experiences, bitter and pleasant, I try to sum up good only.
What I said about the Germans you may not have understood. I did not explain. There is, I think, a particular German characteristic which has its charm. Accustomed for generations to a communal form of life—totally different from that of the English—there has been developed among them a certain spirit of tolerance and a social inclination essentially German. Also the poverty of their country has nourished a tendency to sobriety of life, while the causes developing their educational system on a wonderful level of economy have brought the race, I believe, to a higher general plane than others. I don’t mean that the top-shoots are higher than French or English; but I think the middle growth educationally is. At all events a German community in America or in Japan, while it remains German—has a peculiar charm—an independence of conventions, as distinguished from the religious and social codes,—and an exterior affability,—quite different from the individualism of other communities. Perhaps, however, the friendship never goes quite as deep as in those isolated natures so much harder to win.
The essay by Spencer you will find in a volume sent you by mail, and sent to me by my American friend. It did not appear in the old editions. Perhaps I may try the feat some day of a Japanese study on those lines,—though I must acknowledge that I now perceive several of my views entirely wrong. I also perceive how closely Lowell reached the neighbourhood of truth without being able, nevertheless, (or willing?) to actually touch it. My conclusion is that the charm of Japanese life is largely the charm of childhood, and that the most beautiful of all race childhoods is passing into an adolescence which threatens to prove repulsive. Perhaps the manhood may redeem all,—as with English “bad boys” it often does.
I fear I can scarcely finish “Occult Japan,” and that I praised it too much in my late letter, after hasty examination. It strikes me only as a mood of the man, an ugly, supercilious one, verging on the wickedness of a wish to hurt. When my eyes improve, I should like better to see his work on Mars. I don’t wish to say that my work is as good as Lowell’s “Soul of the Far East;” but it is a curious fact that in at least a majority of the favourable criticisms I have been spoken of as far more successful than Lowell. Why? Certainly not because I am his equal, either as a thinker or an observer. The reason is simply that the world considers the sympathetic mood more just than the analytical or critical. And except when the critic is a giant like Spencer or his peers,—I fear the merely critical mood will always be blind to the most vital side of any human question. For the more vital side is feeling,—not reason. This, indeed, Spencer showed long ago. But there was in the “Soul of the Far East” an exquisite approach to playful tenderness—utterly banished from “Occult Japan.”
Ever yours,
Lafcadio Hearn.
Dear Chamberlain,—Thanks for the curious historical envelopes. My eyes are nearly well: there is still one small black spot in the centre of the field of vision; but I trust it will go away as soon as the weather becomes warm.
I am delighted to know you like the book. A curious fact is that out of fifty criticisms sent me, in which the critics select “favourites,” I find that almost every article in the book has been selected by somebody. It thus seems to appeal to persons of totally different temperament in different ways, and this fact suggests itself,—that perhaps no book written entirely in one key can please so well as a book written in many keys. However, the work must be unconscious. If you are curious about any of the “inside facts,” I shall be glad to tell you. The “Teacher’s Diary” is, of course, strictly true as to means and facts; and the artistic work is simply one of “grouping.” The cruiser at Mionoseki was the Takachiho,—since become famous. Hino-misaki and Yaegaki ought to contain something you would like,—so I trust you will peep at them some time. The Gūji of Hino-misaki is my wife’s relative, and the story of his ancestor is quite true.
As for Japanese words, you might like “Out of the East” better. I don’t think there are five Japanese words in the book. But it is chiefly reverie—contains little about facts or places. Perhaps you will be less pleased with it in another way.
As for changing my conclusions,—well, I have had to change a good many. The tone of “Glimpses” is true in being the feeling of a place and time. Since then I’ve seen how thoroughly detestable Japanese can be, and that revelation assisted in illuminating things. I am now convinced, for example, that the deficiency of the sexual instinct (using the term philosophically) in the race is a serious defect rather than a merit, and is very probably connected with the absence of the musical sense and the incapacity for abstract reasoning. It does not follow, however, that the same instinct may not have been overdeveloped in our own case. To an Englishman, it would appear that such overdevelopment among Latin races would account for the artistic superiority as well as the moral weakness of French and Italians in special directions;—and the fact that even certain classes of music are now called sensual (not sensuous), and that there is a tendency to abjure Italian music in favour of the more aspirational German music,—would seem to show that the largest-brained races are reaching a stage in abstract æsthetics still higher than the highest possible development of the æsthetics based on the sexual feeling. That the Japanese can ever reach our æsthetic stage seems to me utterly impossible, but assuredly what they lack in certain directions they may prove splendidly capable of making up in others. Indeed the development of the mathematical faculty in the race—unchecked and unmollified by our class of æsthetics and idealisms—ought to prove a serious danger to Western civilization at last. At least it seems to me that here is a danger. Japan ought to produce scientific, political, and military haters of “ideologists,”—Napoleons of practical applications of science. All that is tender and manly and considerate and heroic in Northern character has certainly grown out of the sexual sentiment: but the same class of feelings in the far East would seem to have been evolved out of a different class of emotional habits, and a class bound to disappear. Imagine a civilization on Western lines with cold calculation universally substituted for ethical principle! The suggestion is very terrible and very ugly. One would prefer even the society of the later Roman Empire.
I am sorry your eyes are not all you could wish. Do you not think it may be the weather? The doctor tells me my eyes will be all right in summer, but that I have to be careful in cold weather. And the tropics did me wonderful good. I want to get to the warm zones occasionally—perhaps shall be able to. There are some tropics bad for the eyes,—lacking verdure. I have been unable to get facts about tropical conditions on this side of the world,—except through Wallace. Ceram suggests possibilities. But one must be well informed before going. Then there are the French Marquesas. A French colony ought to be full of romance, and void of missionaries. But all these are dreams.
Ever faithfully,
Lafcadio Hearn.
Dear Chamberlain,—It was very comforting to get a letter from you; for I wanted an impulse to write. I have been blue—by reason partly of the weather; and partly because of those reactions which follow all accomplished work in some men’s cases. Everything done then seems like an Elle-woman,—a mere delusive shell; and one marvels why anybody should have been charmed.
Of course I did not ask point-blank for criticisms, because you told me long ago, “Every man should make his own book,”—and, although it is the literary custom in America to consult friends, I could see justice in the suggestion. The title “Out of the East” was selected from a number. It was suggested only by the motto of the Oriental Society, “Ex Oriente lux.” The “Far East” has been so monopolized by others that I did not like to use the phrase. “Out of the Uttermost East” would sound cacophonously,—besides suggesting a straining for effect. I thought of Tennyson’s “most eastern east,” but the publishers didn’t approve it. The simpler the title, and the vaguer—in my case—the better: the vagueness touches curiosity. Besides, the book is a vague thing. Sound has much to do with the value of a title. If it hadn’t, you would have written “Japanese Things” instead of “Things Japanese”—which is entirely different, and so pretty that your admirers and imitators snapped it up at once. So we have “Things Chinese” by an imitator, and “Things Japanese” is a phrase which has found its recognized place in the vocabulary of critics of both worlds. Your criticism on “Out of the East,” though, would have strongly influenced me, if you had sent it early enough. I noticed the very same suggestion in the Athenæum regarding the use of the word “Orient” and the phrase “Far East” by Americans. For our “Orient” is, as you say, still the Orient of Kinglake, of De Nerval, etc. But why should it be? To Milton it was the Indian East with kings barbaric sitting under a rain of pearls and gold.
Manila was long my dream. But, although my capacity for sympathy with the beliefs of Catholic peasantry anywhere is very large,—the ugly possibility exists that the Inquisition survives in Manila, and I have had the ill-fortune to make the Jesuits pay some attention to me. You know about the young Spaniard who had his property confiscated, and who disappeared some years ago,—and was restored to liberty only after heaven and earth had been moved by his friends in Spain. I don’t know that I should disappear; but I should certainly have obstacles thrown in my way. Mexico would be a safer country for the same class of studies,—Ceram ought to be interesting: in Wallace’s time the cost of life per individual was only about 8s. 6d. a year! A moist, hot tropical climate I like best. The heat is weakening, I know, but that moisture means the verdure that is a delight to the eyes, and palms, and parrots, and butterflies of enormous size;—and no possibility of establishing Western conditions of life. I should like very much to see the book you kindly offered to lend me. It might create new aspirations: I am always at night dreaming of islands in undiscovered seas, where all the people are gods and fairies.
Of course I cannot know much about it now, but I am almost sure of having been in Malta as a child. At a later time my father, who was long there, told me queer things about the old palaces of the knights, and a story about a monk who, on the coming of the French, had the presence of mind to paint the gold chancel-railing with green paint. Southern Italy and the Mediterranean islands are especially fitted for classical scholars, like Symonds; but what a world of folk-lore also is there still ungathered! I should think that, next to Venice, Malta must be the most romantic spot in Europe.
I see your paper on Loochoo must have been much more than what you said of it,—viz., that only some snuffy German would read it. Or was the London report about the paper on Loochoo which I have? (There must be a wonderful ghost-world in those islands,—though it would be quite hard to get at: probably three years’ work.)
You can’t imagine my feeling of reaction in the matter of Japanese psychology. It seems as if everything had quite suddenly become clear to me, and utterly void of emotional interest: a race primitive as the Etruscan before Rome was, or more so, adopting the practices of a larger civilization under compulsion,—five thousand years at least emotionally behind us,—yet able to suggest to us the existence of feelings and ideals which do not exist, but are simulated by something infinitely simpler. Wonder if our own highest things have not grown up out of equally simple things. The compulsion first—then the sense of duty become habit, automatic, the conviction expanding into knowledge of ethical habit,—then the habit creating conviction,—then relations,—then the capacity for general ideas. But all the educational system now seems to me farcical and wrong,—except in mere dealing with facts apparent to common sense. There are no depths to stir, no race-profundities to explore: all is like a Japanese river-bed, through which the stones and rocks show up all the year round,—and is never filled but in time of cataclysm and destruction.
Ever faithfully,
Lafcadio Hearn.
Dear Chamberlain,—Of course send back the Taylor and Pater—if you don’t care for them. I myself was very much disappointed in Pater. Perhaps my liking for Taylor is connected with boyish recollections of his facile charm: even Longfellow cannot greatly thrill me now. And may I make a confession?—I can’t endure any more of Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley—having learned the gems of them by heart. I really prefer Dobson and Watson and Lang. Of Wordsworth Watson sings,—
“It may be thought has broadened since he died!”
Well, I should smile! His deepest truths have become platitudes.
This reminds me that I have wanted to talk to you about a magical bit of Hugo’s, “Chant de Sophocle à Salamine.” It is such a striking instance of Hugo’s greatness and littleness. You know it, I suppose. It opens thus:—
The italicized words make me mad. It is a bathos, the fourth line—shrieking bathos; while the first part of the verse is like a Greek frieze. But let us go on:—
(Now for the magnificence!)
What makes the splendour of this verse? Not only the tremendous contrast,—apocalyptic. It is especially, I think, the magnificent dual use of “sinistre.” How Hugoish the whole thing is!...
I fear that what I said long ago is likely to come true: the first fire is burnt out,—the zeal is dead,—the educational effort (one of the most colossal in all history, surely) having served its immediate purpose (the recovery of national autonomy) is dead. Hence there is a prospect of decay.
Now I should like to protest against this danger in a review-article: say, “History of the Decline and Fall of Education in Japan;” or, “History of Foreign Teaching in Japan.” Could I get documents?—just a skeleton at least; of statistics, rules, details, numbers. The article has been in my mind for two years. And I notice the Japanese don’t object to healthy criticisms at all,—rather like them. They hate petting-talk, however,—and stupid misinterpretations. I should like to try the thing.
I think it is Amenomori who is writing rather savage things in the Chronicle just now, about the Mombushō, and threatens to write more. There is a something unpleasant in the tone of Japanese satire to me,—however clever, it shows that they have not yet reached the same perception of sensibility as we have. Of course I refer only to the best of them—masters. The sympathetic touch is always absent. I feel unhappy at being in the company of a cultivated Japanese for more than an hour at a time. After the first charm of formality is over, the man becomes ice—or else suddenly drifts away from you into his own world, far from ours as the star Rephan.
You will be pleased to hear that I have not yet dropped money. I have made nothing to speak of, but have lost none so far. By fall I suppose I shall have made something, though no fortune, out of “Glimpses.” If I can clear enough to justify a tropical trip, I shall be satisfied.
Malta must be delightful. But I am not enough of a scholar to use such an opportunity as Malta would give. I should do better with Spain and gipsies, or Pondicherry and Klings.
By the way, my child-tongue was Italian. I spoke Romaic and Italian by turns. In New Orleans I hired a teacher to teach me,—thinking memory would come back again. But it didn’t come at all, and I quarrelled with the teacher, who looked exactly like a murderer and never smiled. So I know not Italian.
Ever faithfully,
Lafcadio Hearn.
Dear Chamberlain,—About three days ago came the welcome books. “The Cruise of the Marchesa” it would be difficult to praise too highly. There are a few touches here and there slightly priggish, or snobbish,—but the fine taste of the writer as a rule, his modesty as a man of science, his compact force of expression, his appreciation of nature, his astonishing capacity for saying a vast deal in a few words, are indubitable, and give the book a very high literary place. The engravings are lovely. The other book is an amazement. How any man could seriously make such a book I can’t possibly imagine. It is the most disgraceful attempt of the sort I ever saw,—absolutely unreadable as a whole: an almanac is a romance by comparison. Still I found a lot of interesting facts by groping through it. I should scarcely like to trust myself in Manila.
The Marchesa book is a delight, and will bear many readings. The general impression is that both Sulu and the Celebes are paradises; but that Dutch order is highly preferable to the condition of the isles under Spanish domination (in theory). The necessity of dress-coats and de rigueur habits is the chief drawback, I should imagine, at a place like Macassar. But the Malayan Dutch colonies must be delightful places. I fear, however, that as in Java, the Christianization of the natives has spoiled the field for folk-lore work.
The Ryūkyū chapters, with the illumination of your own pamphlet, make a very pleasant, dreamy, gentle sensation. Half-China and half-Japan under tropical conditions should create a particular queerness quite different from our Dai Nippon queerness. I hardly believe that the conditions will change so rapidly as those of Japan proper. In such latitudes and such isolation changes do not come quickly. There are little places on the west coast I know of where the conditions must be still pretty near the same as they were a thousand years ago.
I fear, however, my travelling days (except for business and monotonous work) are nearly over. I’m not going to get rich. Some day I may hit the public; but that will probably be when I shall have become ancient. I feel just now empty and useless and a dead failure. Perhaps I shall feel better next season. At all events I have learned that, beyond all doubt and question, it is absolutely useless for me to try to “force work.” If the feeling does not come of itself from outside, one had better do nothing.
I had a sensation the other day, though, which I want to talk to you about. I felt as if I hated Japan unspeakably, and the whole world seemed not worth living in, when there came two women to the house, to sell ballads. One took her samisen and sang; and people crowded into the tiny yard to hear. Never did I listen to anything sweeter. All the sorrow and beauty, all the pain and the sweetness of life thrilled and quivered in that voice; and the old first love of Japan and of things Japanese came back, and a great tenderness seemed to fill the place like a haunting. I looked at the people, and I saw they were nearly all weeping, and snuffing; and though I could not understand the words, I could feel the pathos and the beauty of things. Then, too, for the first time, I noticed that the singer was blind. Both women were almost surprisingly ugly, but the voice of the one that sang was indescribably beautiful; and she sang as peasants and birds and semi sing, which is nature and is divine. They were wanderers both. I called them in, and treated them well, and heard their story. It was not romantic at all,—small-pox, blindness, a sick husband (paralyzed) and children to care for. I got two copies of the ballad, and enclose one. I should be very glad to pay for having it translated literally:—if you think it could be used, I wish you would some day, when opportunity offers, give it to a Japanese translator. As for price, I should say five yen would be a fair limit.
Would you not like me to return some day your version of the Kumamoto Rōjō, and admirable translation? I preserve it carefully; and have used some of the lines for a sketch in the forthcoming book. I rendered nearly the whole into loose verse, but in spite of my utmost efforts, I could do nothing with the best part of it; I could put no spirit into the lines. My suggestion about it is because it is a very curious if not a very poetical thing; and should you ever make an essay upon modern Japanese military songs, it would be a pity not to include it. So it is always carefully kept, not only for its own sake, but also in view of such possible use.
I find it is still the custom when a shinjū occurs to make a ballad about it, and sing the same, and sell it. This reminds one of London. Ballad customs seem to be the same in all parts of the world.
I shall soon return the books, with a copy of the next Atlantic. What could I send you that you would like? I should suggest Rossetti, if you do not know him well—for I think he ranks as high as Tennyson. I have only Wallace among travellers. I have all of Fiske and Huxley and Spencer and Clifford and the philosophy of Lewes. By the way, have you read “Trilby”? I have read it several times over. It is a wonderful book. The art of it escapes one at first reading, when one reads only for the story.
Lafcadio Hearn.
Dear Chamberlain,—I warned you not to get Gautier’s complete works—so you have been disappointed against my desire. Gautier’s own opinion was adverse to the publication of his complete poems in this shape. He selected and published separately those which satisfied him, in the “Emaux et Camées.” (I once translated “Les Taches Jaunes,”—isn’t it?—in the other volume; a bit of weird sensualism quite in the Romantic spirit.) Gautier’s work is often uneven. He was a journalist, and lived by the newspaper. His life’s complaint was that he could never find time for perfect work: the effort merely to live finally worried him to death during the siege, I think. Still, writing merely for a newspaper,—in haste,—without a chance to think and polish,—his feuilletons remain treasures of French literature. (You are very unjust to his prose; for it is the finest of all French prose.) His complete works are worth having—they run to about 60 vols., but they cannot all be had from one publisher. So he has become a subject for book-collectors. Sainte-Beuve, like Gautier, existed as a journalist. In France a journalist used to have literary chances. In English-speaking countries literary work is still outside of the newspapers; and our would-be littérateurs have therefore a still harder struggle. (See that article in the Revue. No English prose could accomplish those feats of colour and sensation—delicate sensation the most difficult to produce. English as an artistic tongue is immeasurably inferior to French.)
“Philip and His Wife” was finished in the October number. I know I sent all the numbers containing it. Mrs. Deland is a great genius, I think. Her “Story of a Child” was one of the daintiest bits of psychology I ever read.
Sorry you deny hereditary sensation. The idea of the experimentalists that the mind of the newly born child is a tabula rasa, and that all sensations are based on individual experiences, is no longer recognized—not at least by the evolutional school of psychology, the only purely scientific school. Spencer especially has denied this idea. In the life about us we see every day proofs of inherited capacity for pleasures we know nothing of, and incapacity for pleasures normal to us and to our whole race. Indeed, I can prove the fact to you at any time....
Faithfully,
Lafcadio Hearn.
P. S. I have been out for a walk. As usual the little boys cried “Ijin,” “Tōjin,”—and, although I don’t go out alone, the changed feeling of even the adult population toward a foreigner wandering through their streets was strongly visible.
A sadness, such as I never felt before in Japan, came over me. Perhaps your pencilled comments on the decrease of filial piety, and the erroneous impressions of national character in “Glimpses,” had something to do with it. I felt, as never before, how utterly dead Old Japan is, and how ugly New Japan is becoming. I thought how useless to write about things which have ceased to exist. Only on reaching a little shrine, filled with popular ex-voto,—innocent foolish things,—it seemed to me something of the old heart was beating still,—but far away from me, and out of reach. And I thought I would like to be in the old Buddhist cemetery at Gesshōji, which is in Matsue, in the Land of Izumo,—the dead are so much better off than the living, and were so much greater.
Dear Chamberlain,—You will scarcely be able to believe me, I imagine; but I must confess that your letter on “shall” and “will” is a sort of revelation in one sense—it convinces me that some people, and I suppose all people of fine English culture, really feel a sharp distinction of meaning in the sight and sound of the words “will” and “shall.” I confess, also, that I never have felt such a distinction, and cannot feel it now. I have been guided chiefly by euphony, and the sensation of “will” as softer and gentler than “shall.” The word “shall” in the second person especially has for me a queer identification with English harshness and menace,—memories of school, perhaps. I shall study the differences by your teaching, and try to avoid mistakes, but I think I shall never be able to feel the distinction. The tone to me is everything—the word nothing. For example, the Western cowboy says “Yes, you will, Mister,” in a tone that means something much more terrible than the angry educated Englishman’s “you shall.” I know this confession is horrid—but there’s the truth of the matter; and I feel angry with conventional forms of language of which I cannot understand the real spirit. I trust the tendency to substitute “will” for “shall” which you have noticed, and which I have always felt, is going eventually to render the use of “shall” with the first person obsolete. I am “colour blind” to the values you assert; and I suspect that the majority of the English-speaking races—the raw people—are also blind thereunto. It is the people, after all, who make the language in the end, and in the direction of least resistance.
You did not quite catch my meaning on the subject of inherited feeling. I did not hint you denied heredity (though your last letter embodies several strong denials of it, I think). I believe it is an accepted general rule, for example, that only a child having parents of different races can learn even two languages equally well: in other cases, one language gains at the expense of the other. Creoles exemplify this rule. Toys are related to the æsthetic faculty, to the play-impulse, to the imaginative capacity. These differ really in different races; and represent, not individual education at all, but the sum of racial experiences under certain conditions. I cannot believe for a moment that an English child born in Japan could feel the same sensation on looking at a Japanese picture as the sensation felt by a Japanese child when looking at the same picture. (With food, the matter is different: English children in many cases disliking greasy cooking, and in other cases showing a decided preference for fat. Only a very large number of instances—many thousand—could really show any general rule in the case of English children born in Japan. The evidence you cite seems to me a contradiction, or exception to general tendencies.) The psychical fact about feelings and emotions is that they are inheritances, just as much as the colour of hair, or the size of limbs; and tastes—such as a taste for music or painting—are similarly inherited. They are outside of the individual experience as much as a birthmark. To explain fully why, would involve a lot of neurological scribbling,—but it is sufficient to say that as all feelings are the result of motions in nervous structure, the volume and character and kind of feeling is predetermined in each individual by the character of nerve-tissue and its arrangement and complexity. In no two individuals are the nervous structures exactly the same; and the differences in races or individuals are consequent upon the differences in quality, variety, and volume of ancestral experience shaping each life.
“The experience-hypothesis,” says Spencer, “is inadequate to account for emotional phenomena. It is even more at fault in respect to the emotions than in respect to the cognitions. The doctrine that all the desires, all the sentiments, are generated by the experiences of the individual, is so glaringly at variance with facts that I wonder how any one should ever have entertained it.” And he cites “the multiform passions of the infant, displayed before there has been any such amount of experience as could possibly account for them.”
In short, there is no possible room for argument as to whether each particular character—with all its possibilities, intellectual or emotional—is not predetermined by the character of nervous structure, slowly evolved by millions of billions of experiences in the past. As the differences in the ancestral sums of experiences, so the differences in the psychical life. Varying enormously in races so widely removed as English and Japanese, it is impossible to believe that any feeling in one race is exactly parallelled by any feeling in the other. It is equally impossible to think that the feelings of a Japanese child can be the same as those of an English child born in Japan. Amazing physical proof to the contrary would be afforded by a comparative study of the two nervous structures.
To say, therefore, that the sight of a toy—adjusted exactly by the experience of the race to the experience of the individual—produces on the mind of a Japanese child the same impression it would produce on the mind of an English child born in Japan and brought up by Japanese only, would be to deny all our modern knowledge of biology, psychology, and even physiology. The pleasure of the Japanese child in its toy is the pleasure of the dead.
Ever faithfully,
Lafcadio Hearn.
Dear Chamberlain,—“The law of heredity is unlimited in its application” (Spencer, “Biology,” vol. i, chapter “Heredity”). “Some naturalists seem to entertain a vague belief [like yours?] that the law of heredity applies only to main characters of structure, and not to details; or that though it applies to such details as constitute differences of species, it does not apply to smaller details. The circumstance that the tendency to repetition is in a slight degree qualified by the tendency to variation (which ... is but an indirect result of the tendency to repetition) leads some to doubt whether heredity is unlimited. A careful weighing of the evidence ... will remove the ground for this skepticism.” (“Biology,” vol. i, p. 239.)
Your statement that the “weak person will always remain weak,” but that “the manifestations of his weakness will surely depend on the nature of the obstacles in his way,” is a proof that you do not perceive the full reach of the explanation. The manifestations of weakness may be evoked by obstacles, but the nature of those manifestations cannot possibly have anything in common with the nature of the obstacles. The weakness being hereditary, the nature of the obstacle cannot change it.
The case of the Northern nations seems to me direct proof of the contrary to what you suggest. Olaf Trygvesson and others never really changed the national religion, except in name,—no such rapid change would have been possible. The worship of Odin and Thor continued under the name of Christ and the Saints,—and still continues to some extent to influence English life. The shaking-off of ecclesiastical power at a later day,—the protestantizing of the Northern races,—is certainly the manifestation in history of the same fierce love of freedom that founded the Icelandic Republic. So with English limitation of monarchical power, the history of the constitution, etc. So with the superiority of English and Norse seamanship to-day,—Vikings still command our fleet. The changes you cite as evidence of the non-influence of heredity really prove it: they are, moreover, mere surface-shiftings of colour, and do not reach down into the national life. Variations are the result of heredity, not the exceptions to it. The explanation of this fact would necessitate, however, a long discussion on the deepening or weakening of those channels of nerve-force which are the river-courses of life and thought. Similarly, growth—of brain and thought as well as of body—is the consequence, not the contradiction, of inheritance. So with instinct,—which is organized memory,—and with genius, which represents accumulations of capacity (often at the expense of other growths).
I fear you think of Galton only when you limit the word heredity. Universal life and growth is touched by the larger meaning: Galton’s wonderful books represent merely a domestic paragraph of the subject. The underlying principles of evolution—the deep laws of physiological growth and development—involve far vaster and profounder consideration of the subject. Inheritance is no “fad:” it means you and me and the world and our central sun.
My text was plain,—but you have forgotten it. I spoke of “ancestral pleasure,” “hereditary delight.” You deny their possibility. The toys are not ancestral, of course, nor did I say they were,—but they appealed to ancestral feeling. Why? All pleasure is hereditary—every feeling is inherited. Why, then, say so? Because in this case we are considering race-feelings widely differentiated from our own.
But all this is surface,—the ghostly side of the question is the beautiful one, and one which you would not deny without examining the evidence? Perhaps you think that the first time you saw Fuji or Miyanoshita, you had really a new sensation. But you had nothing of the kind. The sensations of that new experience in your own life were millions of years old! Far from simple is the commonest of our pleasures, but a layer, infinitely multiple, of myriads of millions of ancestral impressions. Try to analyze the sensation of pleasure in a sunrise, or the smell of hay, and how soon we are lost. We can only classify the elements of such a pleasure “by bundles,” so to speak.
It might at first sight shock a strong soul to perceive itself not individual and original, but an infinite compound. But I think one’s pride in one’s good should subsequently expand. The thought that one’s strength is the strength of one’s ancestors—of a host innumerable and ancient as the race—has its larger consolation. And here is the poetry of the thing. You are my friend B. H. C. But you are much more—you are also Captain B. H., and a host of others—doubtless Viking and Norman and Danish—a procession reaching back into the weird twilight of the Northern gods.
So much for the fun of our discussion. I won’t send the long screed: it is too full of dry stuff, and on reading it over I find that my enthusiasm betrayed me into several wild misstatements.
I am sorry about your cold, and I can sympathize; for I also have been ill, and my boy, and I find spring very trying. I am all right to-day, and so are we all.
Wish I were nineteen years old, and, like Ben, going to sea. As a boy, I cried and made a great fuss because they told me, “You can’t go to sea: you are too near-sighted.” Perhaps I was saved from disillusions.
You know Frederick Soulié’s “Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait.” There was an unconscious recognition of heredity,—before modern biology had been synthetized.
Ever with best wishes and regards,
Lafcadio Hearn.
Dear Chamberlain,—On re-reading your letter I find it necessary to assure you positively (pardon me if I am rude) that you have no conception whatever, not the least, of the scientific opinions as to psychological evolution held by Spencer. It is necessary I should say this,—otherwise the mere discussion of details would leave you under the impression that I recognize your understanding of the subject. It is quite obvious that you do not understand evolution at all. You do understand natural selection,—but that is quite another matter.
To comprehend psychological evolution, it is first necessary to banish absolutely from the mind every speck of belief that the individual can be changed in character, or intrinsically added to, by any influence whatever, to any perceptible degree. There may be modifications or increments, just as there may be decrements, but these remain imperceptible. The race is visibly modified in the course of centuries—not the individual, whether by education, environment or anything else. The millions of years required for the development of a body are much more required for the development of a mind. Could the individual be really changed to the degree imagined by the soul-theory, a few generations would suffice to form a perfectly evolved race.
Education and other influences only develop or stimulate the preëxisting. There is an unfolding (possibly also a very slight increment of neural structure), but the unfolding is of that formed before birth. There are no changes such as seriously affect character. The evolution of the race is perceptible,—not that of the individual, except as the individual life is that of the race in epitome.
Besides emotions, passions, etc., certain ideas are necessarily inherited. Otherwise mental development in the individual even could not take place. Such is the idea of Space, and other ideas which form the canvas and stage of thought. Simple as they seem, they are complicated enough to have required millions of years to form.
Evolution includes not merely the shaping and modification of existing matter, but the development of visible matter itself out of the invisible. The evidence of chemistry is that all substances we call elements have been evolved by tendencies out of something infinitely simpler and massless.
Lafcadio Hearn.
Precisely for the same reason that the majority of men in all countries live more by feeling than by reason, and that the emotions, which are inheritances, play a greater part in the individual life than the reasoning faculties, which need training and experience for their development and use,—so is the study of heredity of larger importance in the study of emotional life. And therefore your suggestion that one factor should not be dwelt on rather than others would be bad to follow,—first, because all are not equal either in importance or interest, and secondly because the circumstance related or studied must be considered especially in relation to the principal factor of the psychological state which that circumstance has evoked.
Dear Chamberlain,—The factors of evolution are multitudinous beyond enumeration, and no one with a ghost of knowledge of the modern scientific researches on the subject could hold (as you suggest I do) that heredity is a first cause and “exclusive”(!) Heredity is a result, and the vehicle of transmission, as well as the “Karma” (which Huxley calls it). Degeneration, atrophy, atavism, are quite as much factors in evolution as variation and natural selection and development;—but the flowing of the eternal stream, the river of life, is heredity,—whatever form the ripples take. As I have given some twenty years’ study to these subjects, I am not likely to overlook any such thing as environment or climate or diet. You cannot, however, get a grasp of the system by reading only a digest of results—a study of biology and physiology is absolutely necessary before the psychology of the thing can be clearly perceived. Now you say you will accept anything Spencer writes on the subject. Well, he writes that “a child” playing with its “toys” experiences “presentative-representative feelings.” What are presentative-representative feelings? They are feelings chiefly “deeper than individual experience.” What are feelings deeper than individual experience? Mr. Spencer tells us they are “inherited feelings,”—the sum of ancestral experiences,—the aggregates of race-experience. Therefore when I said the child’s delight in its toys was “hereditary-ancestral,” I said precisely what Spencer says, but what you would never acknowledge so long as “only I” said it.
On this subject of emotions inherited as distinguished from others, and from those changes in states of consciousness generally which we call reasoning or constructive imagination, the definite utterances of Spencer as physiologist are electrically reënforced by the startling theory of Schopenhauer, by the system of Hartmann, and by the views of Janet and his rapidly growing school. Indeed, the mere fact that a child cries at the sight of a frowning face and laughs at a smiling one could be explained in no other manner.
You are not quite correct in saying that Spencer could not obtain a hearing before Darwin. Before Darwin, Spencer had already been recognized by Lewes as the mightiest of all English thinkers, with the remarkable observation that he was too large and near to be justly estimated even in his lifetime. Darwin did much, of course, to illuminate one factor of evolution; but I need hardly say that one factor, though the most commonly identified with evolution, is but one of myriads. Natural selection can explain but a very small part of the thing. The colossal brain which first detected the necessity of evolution as a cosmic law,—governing the growth of a solar system as well as the growth of a gnat,—the brain of Spencer, discerned that law by pure mathematical study of the laws of force. And the work of the Darwins and Huxleys and Tyndalls is but detail—small detail—in that tremendous system which has abolished all preëxisting philosophy and transformed all science and education.
I need scarcely say, however, that I should not be able, as a literary dreamer, to derive the inspiration needed from Spencer alone: he is best illuminated, I think, by the aid of Schopenhauer and the new French school which considers the so-called individual as really an infinite multiple. These men have said nothing of value which Spencer has not said much better scientifically,—but they are infinitely suggestive when they happen to coincide with him. So, after a fashion, is the Vedantic philosophy (much more so than Buddhism), and so also some few dreams of the old Greek schools.
Your criticisms also show that you take me as confusing changes of relation of integrated states of consciousness with inherited integrations of emotional feeling. These are absolutely distinct. But don’t think that I pretend to be invariably a state of facts: without theory, a very large part of life’s poetry could never be adequately uttered.
I knew that the music of the “Kimi ga yo” was new,—though I did not know the story of the German bandmaster. But I did not know that the words once had no reference to the Emperor. I was more careful, however, than you give me credit for,—since I wrote only “the syllables made sacred by the reverential love of a century of generations,” which, allowing for poetical exaggeration, seems to be all right anyhow, even if the words did not refer to the Emperor. Of course the implication to the foreign reader would, however, be wrong.
Still, on the subject of loyalty, I cannot see that the existence of the feeling as inborn is invalidated by the fact of transference. The feeling is the thing,—not the object, not the Emperor nor the Daimyō,—which, I imagine, must have survived all the changes. Trained from the time of the gods to obedience and loyalty to somebody, the feeling of the military classes would not have been instantly dissipated or annihilated by the change of government, but simply transferred. Indeed, that strikes me as having been what the Government worked for. It could not afford to ignore or throw away so enormous a source of power as the inherited feeling of the race offered, and attempted (I think very successfully) to transfer it to the Emperor. The fact in no way affects the truth or falsehood of the sketch “Yūho.”
Your criticism is only a re-denial of inherited feeling as a possibility.
Ever very truly,
Lafcadio Hearn.
Dear Chamberlain,—Excuse me if I don’t reply more fully to your letter, because my eyes are a little tired. I can only say I wish I were sick, somewhere near you: then perhaps you would come and see me, and talk more of these queer things. You would not find the time heavy. For the subject is a romance.
In order to convey by a diagram any picture-idea of what heredity means, one should have to draw a series of inverted cone-figures representing a reticulation of millions of cross-lines. This could only be done well under a microscope, and on a very limited scale. Because the thing goes by arithmetical progression. The individual is the product of 2, the 2 of 4, the 4 of 8, the 8 of 16—well, you know the tale of the smith who offered to shoe a horse with 32 nails, to receive 1 cent on the first nail, and to double the sum upon every nail! The enormity of inheritance is at once apparent. But to produce another individual, another life is needed, which represents the superimposition in the child of another infinitely complex inheritance. The fact is only worth stating as suggesting that under normal circumstances the child would necessarily represent an increment. He should receive not only the experience of his father’s race, but all that of his mother’s race superimposed upon it. The fact that he does very nearly do so is evidenced by the reappearance in his descendants of parental traits always invisible in himself. Mere multiplication ought therefore to account for a larger mental growth and progress than exists or could ever exist.
Why doesn’t it? Simply because in the brain the same selective process goes on as in the vegetable world. As out of 10,000,000 seeds scarcely one survives: so out of a million mental impressions scarcely one survives. Indeed, not so many. For the inheritance is of repetitions,—rarely of single impressions. It is only when an impression has been repeated times innumerable that it becomes transmissible,—that it affects the cerebral structure so as to become organic memory. The inheritance is of a very compound nature, therefore,—requiring either enormous time for development, or enormous experience. There is reason to believe, however, that in the case of very highly organized brains,—such as those of the modern musician, linguist, or mathematician,—the multiple experiences of even one lifetime may produce structural modifications capable of transmission. This is not the case except in men as much larger than common men as Fuji is larger than an ant-hill. And the reason is that such a brain can daily receive billions of impressions that common minds cannot receive in a whole lifetime. The thinking is of the constructive character,—the most highly complex form possible; and the extreme sensitiveness of the structures renders habitual conceptions which represent combinations of conscious states never entered into before. Measured by mere difference of force, the brain of the mathematician is to the brain of the ordinary man as the most powerful dynamo to the muscles of an ant.
Happily for mankind, not only is inheritance something more than repetition, it is also something less than repetition. Between these two extremes of plus and minus the physiology of mental activities in any lifetime represents a fierce struggle for the survival of the best or worst. Here is where the environment comes in,—determining which of a million tendencies shall have freest play or least play. According to circumstances the impulses of the dead are used or neglected. The more used, the more powerful their active potentialities, and the more apt to increase by transmission. But their vitality is racial—measurable only by millions of years. They may lie dormant for twenty centuries, and be suddenly called into being again—sinister and monstrous-seeming, because no longer in harmony with the age. (Here is the point of the selective process.)
Here comes in the consideration of a very terrible possibility. Suppose we use integers instead of quintillions or centillions, and say that an individual represents by inheritance a total of 10—5 of impulses favourable to social life, 5 of the reverse. (Such a balance would really occur in many cases.) The child inherits, under favourable conditions, the father’s balance plus the maternal balance of 9,—four of the number being favourable. We have then a total which becomes odd, and the single odd number gives preponderance to an accumulation of ancestral impulse incalculable for evil. It would be like a pair of scales, each holding a mass as large as Fuji. If the balance were absolutely perfect, the weight of one hair would be enough to move a mass of millions of tons. Here is your antique Nemesis awfully magnified. Let the individual descend below a certain level, and countless dead suddenly seize and destroy him,—like the Furies.
In all cases, however, except those of the very highest forms of mental activity, the psychological life consists of repetitions,—not of originalities. And environment, chance, etc., simply influence the extent and volume of the repetitions. In the case of constructive imagination, on the other hand, there are totally new combinations made independently of environment or circumstances: there is almost creation, and in certain cases absolute faculty of prediction. Instance the case of the mathematician who, without having ever seen the Iceland Spar, but knowing its qualities, said: “Cut it at such an angle, and you will see a coloured circle.” They cut it, and the circle was seen for the first time by human eyes.
Properly, however, there is no such thing as an individual, but only a combination,—one balance of an infinite sum. The charm of a very superior man or woman is the ghostliest of all conceivable experiences. For the man or woman in question can in a single evening become fifty, a hundred, two hundred different people—not in fancy, but in actual fact. Here the character of the ancestral experience has been so high and rare that a different part of the race’s mental life is instantly resurrected at will to welcome and charm, or to master and repel, the various sorts of character encountered, haphazard, in the salon of the aristocratic milieu.
It would be natural to ask: If the emotions and passions are inheritances, why are not these higher faculties inherited en masse as well? Because feeling is infinitely older than thinking, developed millions of years before thinking. Also because the reasoning powers have been grown out of the feelings—as trees from soil. Those forms of consciousness most connected with the animal life of the race are, of course, the first to develop, and the first to become transmissible. But the time may come when higher faculties will be also similarly transmissible.
Taking the highest possible form of human thought,—a mathematical concept,—and analyzing it, we find a whole volume is required for the mere statement of the analysis. The flash of the thought took less than a second; to write all the thinking it involved requires years. We take it to pieces by bundles of concepts and bundles of experiences,—which are changes in relations of compound states of consciousness. The relations of those states of consciousness are resolvable into simpler ones, and those into simpler, and at last we come down to mere perceptions, and the perceptions are separated into ideas, and the ideas into compound sensations, and the compound sensations into sensations simple as those of the amœba, or the humblest protozoa.
Thus we can also trace up the history of any thought from the state of mere animalcular sensation. The highest thought is resolvable into infinite compounds of such sensations. Beyond that we cannot go. The Universe may be sentient, but we don’t know it. All we know is sensation and combinations of sensations in the brain. The highest spiritual sentiment is based upon the lowest animal sensations. But what is sensation? No one can tell. On this subject very awful discoveries are perhaps awaiting us.
Now heredity is the most wonderful thing of all things, because it is utterly incomprehensible.
A mathematical calculation has established beyond all question the fact that the number of ultimate units in a sperm-cell and germ-cell combined is totally insufficient to account for the number of impressions and tendencies transmitted—supposing a change in the ultimate units possible. Therefore in order to have a working theory, we are obliged to use the term polarity,—which only means physical tendency to relationships. But the mystery of the transmission of the impulse remains just as far away as ever.
Of course I can’t agree with you as to the statement of culture from outside, except in the poetical sense. Scientifically the culture movement is internal,—the responses of innumerable dead to exterior influence,—the weirdest resurrections of buried faculties.
As for evolution being caused by outer influences, I think the idea leads to misconception of an intelligent power working and watching things. We have no need of such a theory. Pain is the chief mental factor. The elements of life are remarkable in being chemically unstable,—astonishingly unstable, and the mere working of the universal forces on such elements quite sufficiently accounts for all changes. But the fact that there is no line between life and not-life, no line between the animal and vegetable world, no line between the visible and invisible, no assurance that matter has any existence in itself—that is a very awful truth. It is otherwise incorrect to think of evolution being caused by outer influences, because the inner forces are the really direct ones,—answering to the outer. Moreover, the thing evolved, and the power evolving, and the forces internal and external,—the visible and the non-visible,—are (so far as human reason permits us to judge) all one and the same. We know only phenomena; and modern thought recognizes more and more the Indian thought that the Supreme Brahma is only playing a chess game with himself. Absolutely we know only forces—pure ghostliness. The individual substance is but a force combination,—its changes are force combinations,—the powers outside are but force combinations,—the universe is a force combination—and we can know nothing more than vibrations.
Ever,
Lafcadio Hearn.
P. S. I forgot to notice your statement—“not through the physical fact of nerve-tissue,” etc.
All thinking—all, without exception—is alteration of nerve-substance; either temporary motion or motion making by countless repetition alterations that are permanent. Physiologically, “thought” is a very complex vibration in nerve-tissue. There is no other meaning whatever in science for “thought.” For “thought” is a perception of relations in preëxisting states of consciousness, and those are bundles of sensations. What “sensation” is, no man knows. That is the dark spot in the retina of consciousness. But there is no proof that sensation exists apart from cell-substance.
To speak of an “ideal process” outside of vibration in nervous substance is therefore like saying that 5 times 5 = 918. It is a total denial of all science on the subject. An idea is a bundle of sensations, and a sensation is coincident with a movement in cerebral cells. Without the movement there is no sensation,—not at least in the brain. We do not know the ultimate of sensation, but thoughts and ideas only mean complex combinations of sensations impossible outside of nerve-substance so far as we know.
Of course if you mean by culture from outside the transmission of civilization from one race to another,—then there has been enormous alteration of cerebral structure. Such alteration is even now going on in Japan, and causes yearly hundreds of deaths.
The brain of the civilized man is 30 p.c. heavier than that of the savage; and the brain of the 19th century much larger than that of the 16th (see Broca). A striking fact of evolution is brain-growth. The early mammals were remarkable for the smallness of their brains. Man’s nervous structure is, of course, the most powerful of all. Cut out of the body, it is found to weigh, as a total, double that of a horse. For mind signifies motion, force,—the more powerful the mind the greater the forces evolved. Perhaps the nervous system of a whale might weigh more than that of a man as a total mass, but not nearly so much in parts corresponding with mental differences. Nevertheless the changes effected by progress in the brain are chiefly visible in the direction of increasing complexity rather than in bulk. The study of brain-casts promises to develop some interesting facts.
Dear Chamberlain,—In one of your recent letters, which charmed me by its kindness,—though I did not dwell on the pleasure given me, because I was so immediately occupied in discussing my psychical hobby,—you asked me: “How could I expect to hit the public more than I have done?”
Well, not with a book on Japan, perhaps; but I must do better some day with something, or acknowledge myself a dead failure. I really think I have stored away in me somewhere powers larger than those I have yet been able to use. Of course I don’t mean that I have any hidden wisdom, or anything of that sort; but I believe I have some power to reach the public emotionally, if conditions allow.
One little story which would never die, might suffice,—or a volume of little stories. Stories, fiction: that is all the public care about. Not essays, however clever,—nor vagaries, nor travels,—but stories about something common to all life under the sun. And this is just the very hardest of all earthly things to do. I might write an essay on some topic of which I am now quite ignorant,—by studying the subject for the necessary time. But a story cannot be written by the help of study at all: it must come from outside. It must be a “sensation” in one’s own life,—and not peculiar to any life or any place or time.
I have been studying the “will” and “shall” carefully, and think that I shall be able to avoid serious mistakes hereafter. It is difficult, however, for me to get the “instantaneous sense”—so to speak—of their correct use. The line between “intention” and “future sequence” I can’t well define.
I can’t help fearing that what you mean by “justice and temperateness” in writing means that you want me to write as if I were you, or at least to measure sentence or thought by your standard. This, of course, would render frank correspondence impossible,—as it does even now to some extent. If I write well of a thing one day, and badly another—I expect my friend to discern that both impressions are true, and solve the contradiction—that is, if my letters are really wanted. For absolute “justice and temperateness,” one can find them in the pages of Herbert Spencer—but you would then discern that even la raison peut fatiguer à la longue. I should suppose the interest of letters not to be in the text, but in the writer. Am I wrong?
L. H.