Download Evolution of the Japanese, Social and Psychic By Sidney Pdf book free online – from Evolution of the Japanese, Social and Psychic By Sidney Pdf book; The present work is an attempt to interpret the characteristics of modern Japan in the light of social science.
It also seeks to throw some light on the vexed question as to the real character of so-called race-nature, and the processes by which that nature is transformed. If the principles of social science here set forth are correct, they apply as well to China and India as to Japan, and thus will bear directly on the entire problem of Occidental and Oriental social intercourse and mutual influence.
Though the difficulty seems insurmountable, I am persuaded that the most fruitful cause of racial misunderstandings and of defective descriptions both of the West by Orientals, and of the East by Occidentals, is a well-nigh universal misconception as to the nature of man, and of society, and consequently of the laws determining their development. In the East this error arises from and rests upon its polytheism, and the accompanying theories of special national creation and peculiar national sanctity. On these grounds alien races are pronounced necessarily inferior. China’s scorn for foreigners is due to these ideas.
Although this pagan notion has been theoretically abandoned in the West, it still dominates the thought not only of the multitudes, but also of many who pride themselves on their high education and liberal sentiments. They bring to the support of their national or racial pride such modern sociological theories as lend themselves to this view. Evolution and the survival of the fittest, degeneration and the arrest of development, are appealed to as justifying the arrogance and domineering spirit of Western nations. But the most subtle and scholarly doctrine appealed to in support of national pride is