ABSTRACT
East and West the fundamental parts of human nature the emotional bases of it are much the same: the mental difference between a Japanese and a European child is mainly potential. But Japanese civilisation is peculiar to a degree for which there is perhaps no Western parallel, since it offers us the spectacle of many successive layers of alien culture superimposed above the simple indigenous basis, and forming a very bewilderment of complexity. In its origin such dutiful obedience is essentially religious; and, as expressed in loyalty it retains the religious character becomes the constant manifestation of a religion of self-sacrifice. Loyalty is developed early in the history of a militant people; and we find touching examples of it in the earliest Japanese chronicles.
