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If the first and continued development of man depended on the attainment and the maintenance of the communal principle, we may be sure that his further progress will not consist in the reversal of that principle. If, therfore, individualism must be developed, it must manifestly be of a variety which does not conflict with or abrogate communalism.
Feudal communalism has given way to individualistic commercialism. The results are inevitable. Japan has suddenly entered upon that social order where the individuals of the nation are thrown upon their own choice for character and life as they have been at no previous time. Old men, as well as young, are thrown off their feet by the new temptations into which they fall.
Individualism is that developed stage of communalism, wherein the advantages of close communal unity have been retained, and wherein, at the same time, the idea and practice of the worth of the individual and the importance of giving him liberty of thought and action have been added.
The only possible condition under which a new lease of progressive life could be secured by them was a new variety of individualism, which would unite the opposite and apparently contradictory poles of communalism and egoism, namely, communo-individualism.
The intricacy of back streets was quite unknown to him, and he seemed at almost every corner to be stepping into yards and cul-de-sacs, from which he had perforce to turn back again. In a short time all sense of the points of the compass was gone. A small ragged urchin asked him the time, and that casual touch of communalism made him feel more at home.
By individualism I mean that later order of society in which the worth of the individual has been recognized and emphasized, to the extent of radically modifying the communalism, securing a liberty for individual act and thought and initiative, of which the old order had no conception, and which it would have considered both dangerous and immoral.
Thus, although it is strictly true that every advance in the communal principle accrues to the benefit of the individual, it is not true that such advance necessarily accrues to the benefit of every individual, or equally to all individuals. In its lowest stages, developing communalism lifts all its individual members to about the same level of mental and moral acquirement.
In the one case, where "communalism" reigns, moral action is, so to speak, automatic; it requires no particular assertion of the individual will to do right; conformity to the standard is spontaneous. In the latter case, however, where "individualism" is the leading characteristic of the community, the acceptance of the moral standards usually requires a definite act of the individual will.
Christian individualism embraces and includes thoroughgoing communalism. True and full Christians are the most devoted patriots.
We conclude, then, that the only thoroughgoing interpretation of the differences characterizing Eastern and Western psychic nature is a social one, and that social differences can be adequately expressed only by contrasting the fundamental ideas ruling their respective social orders, namely, communalism for the East and individualism for the West.
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