For these reasons have I absolute confidence in the final acceptance of Christianity by the Japanese.  There is no race characteristic in true Christianity that bars the way.  Furthermore, the very growth of the Japanese in recent years, intellectually and in the reorganization of the social order, points to their final acceptance of Christianity and renders it necessary.  The old religious forms are not satisfying the religious needs of to-day.  And if history proves anything, it proves that only the religion of Jesus can do this permanently.  Religion is a matter of humanity, not of nationality.  It is for this reason that the world over, religions, though of so many forms, are still so much alike.  And it is because the religion of Jesus is pre-eminently the religion of humanity and has not a trace of exclusive nationality about it, that it is the true religion, and is fitted to satisfy the deepest religious wants of the most highly developed as well as the least developed man of any and every race and nation.  In proportion as man develops, he grows out of his narrow surroundings, both physical and mental and even moral; he enters a larger and larger world.  The religious expressions of his nature in the local provincial and even national stages of his life cannot satisfy his larger potential life.  Only the religion of humanity can do this.  And this is the religion of Jesus.  The white light of religion, no less than that of scientific truth, has no local or national coloring.  Perfect truth is universal, eternal, unchangeable.  Occidental or Oriental colorations are in reality defects, discolorations.

XXIX

SOME PRINCIPLES OF NATIONAL EVOLUTION

And now, having studied somewhat in detail various distinctive Japanese characteristics, it is important that we gain an insight into the general principles which govern the development of unified, national life.  These principles render Japanese history luminous.

Let us first fix our attention on the fact that every step in the progress of mankind has been from smaller to larger communities.  In other words, human progress has been through the increasing extension of the communal principle.  The primitive segregative man, if there ever really was such a being, hardly deserves to be called man.  Social qualities he had very slight, if at all; his altruistic actions and emotions were of the lowest and feeblest type.  His life was so self-centered—­we may not call it selfish, for he was not conscious of his self-centeredness—­that he was quite sufficient to himself except for short periods of time.  It was a matter of relative indifference to him whether his kinsmen survived or perished.  His life was in only the slightest degree involved in theirs.  The first step of progress for him depended on the development of some form of communal life.  The primary problem of the social evolution of man was that of taking the wild, self-centered,