INERTIA AS RELATED TO CONSCIOUSNESS 101 



There is, in short, a national rhythm of vitality 

 as there is an individual : there is national youth, 

 national prime, national senility ; the orderly, so-called 

 "spontaneous" unfolding of these phases is inertial. 

 From all we know of Oriental races, we should be 

 safe in assuming that their stationary position, as 

 compared with the nations of the West, is due 

 to their possessing so much more psychic inertia 

 relatively to affectability than the European. 

 This is really what we mean when we speak of the 

 stolid Oriental, the fatalistic Hindoo, the unpro- 

 gressive Chinaman. These ideas are most inter- 

 estingly corroborated in a learned work on Japan, 

 published in 1904.* Here we are told in a quota- 

 tion from Herbert Spencer that " Religious Dynasties 

 have extraordinary powers to resist change," f which 

 is another expression for the inertia of psychic rest. 

 Again, "Legal enactments can nowhere effect an 

 immediate change of sentiment or long-established 

 usage, least of all among a people of such fixity of 

 character as the Japanese,"! and once more, "The 

 old regimentation of society persists under all these 

 surface shiftings, and the national character remains 

 little affected ; " so great is the national psychic 

 inertia. But additional examples of this are found 

 throughout the work. Buddhism, it appears, spread 

 over Japan in the ninth century A.D., displacing a very 

 old form of religion Shinto or ancestor- worship. 



* Lafcadio Hearne, " Japan, an Attempt at Interpretation." 

 (London : Macmillan, 1904.) 



j- Ibid. p. 306. Ibid. p. 420. Ibid. p. 438. 



