The civilisations of China and Japan are impersonal even to a greater
extent than the civilisation of ancient Greece. Percival Lowell
maintains that the diverse manifestations of the spirit of those
countries can only be understood if regarded from the standpoint of
absolute impersonality. He sees in a "pronounced impersonality the most
striking characteristic of the Far East", "the foundation on which the
Oriental character is built up." It is very instructive to observe how
it determines the individual's conception of birth and marriage,
thoughts and acts, life and death. It is carried to so great an extreme
that special terms for "I," "you," "he," do not even exist in the
Japanese language, and have to be replaced by objective circumlocutions.
Not content with the fact of having been born impersonal, it is the
ambition of the inhabitant of the Far East to become more and more so as
his life unfolds itself. Witness the heroic exploits of Japanese
soldiers during the last war: individual soldiers frequently went to
their death for the sake of a small advantage to their group.
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