that this quality of hers comes out conspic-
uous, first as wife, and then as mother.
To how many men, I wonder, did it ever
occur what an upsetting sensation it would
be to change one's name at marriage. To
be known by one name, to speak it, hear it,
write it, read it, from the time one first
remembered one's self, through all those
years when habits are formed and crystal-
lized, and then, presto ! to be known by,
speak, hear, write, read, another one ever
after. Such metamorphosis would certainly
give self-centered man a shock. Yet the
fair sex take their maiden electrocution
without a quiver. Nevertheless, words are
very telling things. It is compliments, not
good-will, that pay us the most poignant
after-calls ; just as it is insults, not injuries,
that stick. All the more so, then, in the
case of that word which of all words is most
one's self. To change that would, to hard-
ened man, seem dangerously like parting
with a part of himself.
Precursor of change it actually proves to
be with woman. Change of name, to which
282 OCCULT JAPAN.
the maiden takes so kindly, turns out but
exponent of the change of thought in her
that follows it. To a great extent the wife
merges her self in her husband's. She adopts
his interests, acquires his dislikes, echoes his
opinions. In the usual case, his intellectual
property, in short, becomes hers. As a small
offset, doubtless, to these acquisitions, her
material property became his.
She shows the same self-obliteration as
mother. A woman lives for and in her off-
spring in a way quite impossible for a man.
A father may care as much for his children,
but he cannot sink his own personality in
theirs as a mother may and does. Her
thought centres in them as naturally as his
centres in himself, with a Hke absence of all
intention in the process.
Thus in both of the two most important
relations of her life a woman shows a disre-
gard and a sacrifice of herself which finds
no corresponding counterpart in man. Man
praises her for it, which is tantamount to
praising her for being a woman. For in her
the action is neither noble nor ignoble; it
simply is. It is also simply normal that man
should appear a very selfish animal by com-
parison.
NOUMENA. 283
Noticeable as these differences in the self
are, they are as nothing compared with the
contrast that confronts an Anglo-Saxon in
the Japanese race. Its indirect manifesta-
tions are so striking that they have found
embodiment in aphorism. The well-worn
epigram that the Japanese are the French
of the far East really rests on this. So does,
also, the less trite one that Japan is the fem-
inine half of the world. For her delicacy,
her daintiness, and her dignity instantly
suggest to our more coarse, more direct,
more original mind something of the fair
sex. An etiquette of soul, I can hear some
one phrase it. Certainly in emotion both go
through the world gloved, but the resem-
blance rests on something below the surface.
Very different as are femininity and far-
orientalism in most things, there is strangely
enough in both a relative absence of self.
Japan is at present engaged in making the
resemblance evident in an interesting if ob-
jectionable manner. When a woman once
lets go her old rules of conduct, she will go
pretty much any lengths in the new. Just
as a fine woman will make even fine men
blush, so a low one will stagger even her
284 OCCULT JAPAN.
male associates. Impulse possesses her for
its own. There is in her a capacity for self-
abandonment to an idea impossible to man.
Lady Macbeth, once started, outdoes my
lord in crime. She knows no hindering
regard for self, no ghostly shapes of other
thoughts to rise and cry to this one " Halt !
enough ! " So Japan.* Decorous as was old
Japan, young Japan, inoculated of foreign
fancy, will cause even the rough and ready
foreigner to start. Just as politeness stood
personified — one may almost say petrified —
in a Japanese gentleman of the old school,
so rudeness incarnate jostles you in his son.
A greater contrast could scarcely be offered
than that between the pageant of an old-
time Japanese setting out upon a journey
and a modern Japanese arrival from one by
train ; the polite eternity of self-deprecatory
bows of the one, the scramble for the wicket
of the other, where man, woman, and child
bump and hustle their neighbors with an
indifferent rudeness that, in any more per-
sonal land, would cause several free fights on
the spot. That it does not do so here shows
that though politeness has gone, personality
has not yet come. Indeed, the impersonal
NOUMENA. 285
character of the hustle is something which
may be felt ; for it is as devoid of subjective
sensibility as of altruistic regard. Imper-
sonality stands patent in the very touch of
it. It seems subtly to embody the distinc-
tion hinted at in the injunction of the topi-
cal refrain, "Don't push; just shove."
II.
Furthermore, this selfhood is a force.
We feel other people's personality in direct
effect upon ourselves, and we perceive and,
in a way, even feel the effect of our person-
ality upon others. We also notice similar
inter-effects between two third persons.
Like all other forces, this force acts inevit-
ably, often quite unconsciously ; and fatally
produces its results when not opposed by
counter forces. Married couples give us
striking every-day instances of it. The
happy pair grow monotonously like each
other, even to the extent of acquiring a
certain family resemblance. The wife be-
comes a replica of her husband, and the
husband, to a certain extent, a duplicate of
his wife, although the effect is more marked
on the woman. As the world is constituted,
286 OCCULT JAPAN.
it is fortunate for domesticity that mutual
transformation is the rule, since otherwise
it may be doubted if the divorce court would
be the exception.
But such inter-affection is no monopoly of
matrimony. Each one of us is continually
impressing, or being impressed by, others in
proportion to the strength of our respective
selves. Originality marks the height of the
one, imitation the depth of the other. The
action is commonly unconscious at the time,
and only recognized afterwards. The fact
is that character is contagious. All men go
through life more or less inoculated thus of
others. Boswell's very acute case of Dr.
Johnson, pathologic as it was, is but an ag-
gravated instance of what is not without a
parallel about us every day. Plenty of men
contract effective admirations, which they
carry with them more or less through life.
And we none of us wholly escape contagion,
both good and bad. Whence the importance
of carefully choosing one's friends. For to
have a sufficiently violent attack of one
person insures, for the time being, practical
immunity from another. To such an extent
are we all chameleons in mind.
NOUMENA. 287
That one self has this effect on its fel-
lows hints at a common essence pervading
them all. It suggests one great imperson-
ality of spirit underlying our several personal
embodiments of it, a certain cosmic, com-
munistic character for the soul. It is for-
tunate there is such mutual influence be-
tween men. Were it not so, this isolated
globe would be a still more isolated spot ;
love would instantly fly out of the window,
and friendship itself be put out of doors.
Minds differ greatly in their pov\-er of
thus impregnating other minds. But it is
especially a quality of the male mind as
compared with the female one. The one
is original and forceful ; the other receptive
and self-adapting. The one imitates, the
other adopts.
Personality, or a man's mental force upon
his fellows, is also in a way measure of the
mental energy of the man.
For we meet personalities that repel us as
well as ones that attract ; personalities, even,
that do not affect us beyond a recognition
that they are, and that they do affect, our
neighbors. We are, therefore, conscious of
personality as such ; in some sort, we even
gauge its amount.
288 OCCULT JAPAN-.
Now the faculty of being influenced by
other people the Japanese possess to a mar-
velous degree. Fundamentally unoriginal,
they have always shown a genius for self-
adaptation. They are at present engaged
in exemplifying their capacity upon a whole-
sale national scale.
It is hardly exaggeration to say that Japan
at this moment is affording the rest of the
world the spectacle of the most stupendous
hypnotic act ever seen, nothing less than the
hypnotization of a whole nation, with its
eyes open. Forty million of folk there are
now innocent freaks of foreign suggestion.
It is not simply the imitating of foreign
customs, but the instant unassimilated char-
acter of the invitation that stamps the na-
tional state of mind as kin to hypnosis, and
gives to both their cousinly touch of carica-
ture. The new idea is adopted with little
or no attempt at adaptation. Such sublime
disregard of congruity shows the hypnotic
completeness with which it is received. In
consequence, Tokyo is now one vast public
platform, in which nature is giving an exhi-
bition of ideal force. Combinations in cos-
tume as beautifully incompatible as any the
NOUMENA. 289
hypnotized subject can be induced to adopt
are at large on its streets, worn in the two
cases from the same motive, unreasoned re-
sponse to stimulus from without ; whence
the irrationality of the result. Nor do the
other subjects see anything ludicrous in it
all.
The action may be said to begin, but by
no means to stop, with costume. Customs,
from top to toe, are undergoing the same
foreign-motived transmogrification. The im-
itation pot-hat and accompanying aura of
billycockism sit no less comically upon a
kimono and cloven socks than does a mod-
ern Tokyo court of justice upon an old-
fashioned Japanese case.
Hypnotoidal imitation is no new trait of
these people. They showed the same pro-
clivity in just the same way more than a
millennium ago. China was the operator
then, as the western world is the operator
now. Susceptibility to suggestion lies at the
root of the race.
290 OCCULT JAPAN.
III.
Not only can one self thus sway another,
but from prehistoric times men have be-
lieved that one self could actually oust
another and act in its stead. The dispos-
sessing self has been variously deemed a
deity, devil, or disembodied spirit — embod-
ied spirits being apparently less eager to
leave their quarters. But whatever its moral
character, it has been held to be every whit
as existent as the poor devil it dispossessed.
Among all peoples we have instances of per-
sons thus possessed by gods, goblins, and
others, instances cropping up all over the
world, from the earliest ages down to the
present day. The character of the possess-
ing spirit has, however, varied with singular
complacency to suit the opinions of the per-
sons it possessed. In a simple society that
favored the idea, the visitant has boldly pro-
claimed himself a god ; in communities
where this assumption was considered arro-
gant, he has contented himself with the
more modest role of devil ; while, finally, in
these latter days, he has been fain to put up
with being the spirit of an Indian brave or
other worthy too insignificant to dispute.
NOUMENA. 291
It is scarcely surprising, perhaps, that
these possessing spirits should have seemed
actual beings, seeing that to common sense
they are such, inasmuch as they rigorously
pass all the tests by which we cognize per-
sonality and know one man from his neigh-
bor, just as rigorously as the unfortunates
they dispossess. This seemingly astounding
statement is easily shown to be undeniable.
Not only to the simple, superficial eye do
the manifestations comport themselves like
distinct personalities ; they do the like when
gauged by all the criteria we are wont to
apply. For how do we know people about
us for distinct individualities } We know
them psychically by the fact that each
seems conscious of himself and of his own
emotions, thoughts, and memories, as being
his own, and as not being anybody else's.
The same is true of these spirits. Each is
evidently conscious of itself, and conscious
of the distinction between itself and all
other selves, the man, in whose body it is,
included. It has its own emotions which
are not his ; its own thoughts, which are not
his ; its own memories, which are not his.
It not only denies that it is he ; it really
292 OCCULT JAPAN.
knows nothing of all those states of con-
sciousness which alone are he. Except as
an outsider, it neither knows him, nor he it.
It does not, of course, follow from the
undeniable fact of its distinct psychical ex-
istence that it is either a god or a devil. To
jump to this conclusion is a quite unwarrant-
able assumption of divinity. But the imma-
teriality of the god does not invalidate the
actuality of the so-called spirit. Because
Smith may erroneously be called Jones,
does not jeopardize the existence of Smith,
though it may considerably imperil the exist-
ence of Jones.
The reconciliation of these two separate
selves consists, as we shall see later, in a
certain denial of self altogether.
Now, besides revealing so much, common
to all manifestations, these Shinto ones re-
veal indirectly considerably more. In the
first place, they disclose the fact that the
Japanese race is very easily possessed.
They do this, first, by their amount, and
secondly, as significantly, by their character.
Their quantity we have seen to be some-
thing enormous. It is safe to say that no
other nation of forty millions of people has
NOUMENA. 293
ever produced its parallel. For not only is
each form surprisingly common, but there
are such a surprising number of forms.
There is intentional possession, and posses-
sion unintentional ; possession by the media-
tion of the church, and possession immedi-
ately by the devil ; beneficent possession by
dead men, and malevolent possession by live
beasts. There is, in short, possession by
pretty much every kind of creature, except
by other living men.
This omission is highly significant. For
it shows that no Japanese personality of itself
has proved potent enough thus to affect its
fellows ; from which it instantly follows that
the great extent possession has reached in
Japan is not due to an excess of personality,
but to a lack of it. As collateral evidence of
this, is the fact that mesmerism, hypnotism,
and the like, were unknown in Japan till
introduced there by the western world ; ab-
sent, not from dearth of subjects, but from
dearth of hypnotizers.
Even more subtly significant is the quality
of the possession. Fortuitous, of course, at
first, god-possession in Japan has passed
from the spontaneous into the systematic
294 OCCULT JAPAN.
Stage. From being wild, the possessing
spirits have become tame. Deity has been
domesticated. Originally a voluntary act of
god upon involuntary- man, possession has
become practically an involuntary divine
acquiescence to human constrainment. The
lightning, in short, has been turned into ser-
viceable electricity.
This constrainment of deity is no new
thing there. It had already come about in
prehistoric times, as the Kojiki and Nihon-
shoki show. Since then it has been more
and more systematized till it has now grown
into a regular business, done as a matter of
course. Comment on this is needless.
The trance itself tells the same story, in
the ease with which the possession is ef-
fected. For the closer the normal state lies
to the abnormal one, the less the wrench in
passing from the one to the other, and the
more seemingly natural the latter when en-
tered. Now compared with mediumistic
trances, the Shint5 possessions are decent,
gentlemanly affairs. There is, indeed, the
initial throe and the subsequent quiver, but
the one is not an epileptic portal to a gen-
eral epileptic appearance throughout, which
NOUMENA. 295
SO disgusts a looker-on in possessions by
mediums. The Shinto gods may be dull,
but they are at least decorous, whereas the
mediumistic spirits are most undesirable
company. And this in spite of the fact
that in America the subjects are usually
women, from whom one would expect more
ladylike behavior.
â– For to be easily controlled abnormally is
as much a characteristic of woman as to be
easily influenced normally. Spirits appar-
ently have always been perfectly aware of
this. From the earliest times they have
shown a pardonable preference for possess-
ing her. The divinely inspired prophetess
was a regular appurtenance of ancient re-
ligions. And that the spirits are still as
partial to her as ever is shown by the present
preponderance of female mediums. For that
the female monopoly of the business is due
to natural capacity, and not simply to sur-
plusage of the sex, is hinted at by the host
of shams which the apparently lucrative
character of the business is able to support.
Hypnotism tells the same story. In spite
of authoritative statements to the contrary,
women are naturally more hypnotizable.
296 OCCULT JAPAN.
than men. That the opposite has been
stated to be the case would seem to be due
to the not uncommon fallacy of not suffi-
ciently simplifying the experiments. For
there are two factors that enter into the re-
sult beside the skill of the operator : the
natural capacity of the subject and the de-
gree to which he is made unconsciously to
cooperate to his own suppression. Indeed,
just as no one may be hypnotized against
his will, so in all cases the subject really
hypnotizes himself. The art of the operator
simply consists in getting him, more or less
unwittingly, to do this. The greater the
natural aptitude of the subject, the less the
art necessary in the operator. To get the
best experiments, therefore, we should elim-
inate as much as may be the latter's skill.
The tyro of an hypnotist is thus the man
whose experiments are really to the point ;
and every tyro in this art of recreating per-
sonality knows that, unlike the original crea-
tor of it, "his prentice hand" he tries on
" woman," not " man," because thus he
stands the greater chance of succeeding.
Woman's superior capacity for being pos-
sessed shows itself even among the Japanese.
NOUMENA. 297
The Nichiren Buddhists, with praiseworthy
astuteness, employ women as vehicles for the
divine descent for this very reason, and the
resulting trance is so easily entered as some-
times to pass counterfeit for a sham.
The French display a like proneness to
altro-possession. Had they not been rela-
tively easily influenced, Mesmer would not
have failed of a livelihood in Vienna to be-
come the rage in Paris ; nor would Char-
cot and Nancy have been the pioneer names
of modern hypnotism. For an art does not
become the vogue among those who have
no natural aptitude for it. Nature divorces
such incompatibility of temper. Priority of
practice is thus the best proof of fitness.
Now it is these same three classes of
mind, the far-oriental, the feminine and the
French, different as they otherwise are, that
vire saw to be relatively so impersonal. Per-
sonality, then, appears to be the opposite
pole to proneness to possession. Spirits of
this world and of the next would seem to
have a reciprocatory action in their posses-
sion of the human body ; the more man the
less god. This suggests that the qualitative
difference between selves is in some sort a
298 OCCULT JAPAN.
quantitative one. Self would appear to be
a something capable of more or less ; inas-
much as a man who is not much himself at
most finds it more facile to become some one
else on occasion ; an instance of the general
principle that it is easier to introduce a
substance into a comparative void than into
space already occupied ; and this in fact is
what I conceive happens ; not materially,
but kinematically. For though we do not
here introduce matter, we do, as I shall
hope to show, introduce motion.
IV.
To do this we must again have recourse to
ourselves, and diagnose, if we may, our own
spirit.
Now on looking into ourselves to see what
ourselves may be, of what are we made
aware } For my part I am conscious of a
kaleidoscopic series of thoughts. These suc-
cessive dissolving views of mine seem to me
to have about as much inter-connection as
kaleidoscopic combinations generally, and I
seem to have about as much influence over
their appearance as I should have over those
of that delightful but unpredicable instru-
NOUMENA. 299
ment, if by attention I could induce it to
evolve along some slightly definite line. In
other words, I am conscious at first sight of
what we call ideas and will, and that the
latter has a certain limited effect upon the
former.
My next discovery is that this power of
my will is not a directly creative force at all.
Not only can I acquire no new mental prop-
erty by simply willing to have it ; I cannot
even lay my hand on what is already my
own, when I would. For I can neither think
a new idea by direct exercise of will, nor can
I directly recall a memory when I please.
All I can do is hold on to, or let go, what
my stream of thought is kind enough to pre-
sent me with. By choosing to attend to any
particular idea that chances to come along,
I allow that idea to beget others after its
kind ; an opportunity of which it instantly
avails itself. If I pay no attention to it, it
promptly goes out. And this is absolutely
all I can do. In this pitifully feeble fashion
I manage to live, move, and have my being
in the firm belief that I could do almost
anything if I pleased.
Will then, consists in the exercise of
300 OCCULT JAPAN.
selective attention. I choose to attend to
one thought rather than another, and then I
do attend to it. But though will in action is
thus all selective attention, all selective at-
tention is not will. For on further scrutiny
of ray stream of thought I am made aware
rather startiingly that will meddles with it
uncommonly little. Observation shows me
that the like is true of my fellows. Indeed,
the greater part of all our lives is made up
of will-less action, of simply thinking the
act and then doing it without any exercise
of will at all. Yet we are not conscious of
being our own on-lookers merely. On the
contrary, we feel very poignantly that we live
in this pageant that unrolls itself before the
mind's eye. We feel this because selective
attention is busy all the while, whether we
will or no, and we are quite aware that it is
thus at work involuntarily.
In the case of this involuntary attention,
the power behind the throne seems to be
quite simply the interest the particular idea
possesses for us. If the idea appeals to us,
we attend to it in spite of ourselves. We
can, indeed, often catch ourselves led pleased
captive thus to some fascinating thought,
NOUMENA. 301
remonstrating impotently as it drags us after
it. It rivets, as we say, our attention.
In short, involuntary attention is simply
the dynamic outcome of the idea. The idea
results as fatalistically in turning and fasten-
ing our attention as a bright object does in
rotating the fovea upon itself, or as the per-
cussion of the cap does in the discharge of
the gun.
Now voluntary attention appears to differ
from the involuntary kind not the least in
attent, but only in intent. We seem in the
latter case to choose which idea we shall
press upon, the consequent pressure proving
quite similar in both.
In our search for the noumenal, then, in
what we call will, we are driven back upon
the act of choice alone.
Now when we search for the cause of our
choice we always bring up against some de-
termining thought. Whenever we succeed
in overtaking that will-o'-the-wisp, our own
will, and triumphantly clutch it, we find in-
variably that we have caught — an idea.
Why am I willing to write these words, when
as a matter of fact I am tempted to lie on
the grass and gaze into the drifting islands
302 OCCULT JAPAN.
of cloud? Because I decided yesterday
that I would — an idea — or because it will
be pleasurable later to have done so — an
idea — or simply to prove to myself that I
have a will — an idea again sarcastically bob-
bing up. Every time that I think to have
closed upon that elusive force, the will, I find
myself left grasping a palpable idea.
Yet we call ourselves conscious of the
autonomy of our will. Nor will I yet say that
we are not. What I will say is that we should
be just as conscious of the fact were the fact