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."