Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/345

Rh from disastrous attack and destruction.

IX.

Before applying these principles to an explanation of the trance, let us see whether they explain that seeming inexplicability, the uncommon impersonality of the Japanese mind. If a lesser mental activity be the cause of a less differentiated individuality, signs of that lesser activity should otherwise be patent. Now when we look for them we find such signs to be numerous.

As a friend of mine once put it epigrammatically in the heat of the moment, a Japanese does not think. Allowing for pardonable exaggeration, the negation not inaptly sums up their state of mind. Specific evidence of the fact confronts one at every turn.

One may, if he will, begin at the top, with lack of originality leading off the list, but instead of beginning at the top, he may as well begin at the bottom and mark the absence of reasoning there.

If in any western land you hail a cab and jump in without a word, the cab-driver before setting out will ask you where you wish