Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/128

Japan as everywhere, the different ages, sexes, and classes of society, differ in respect to the purity of this temperamental distinction. Many important individual exceptions, or examples of other temperaments, also occur.

"The distinguishing mark of the sentimental temperament is great susceptibility to variety of influences—especially on the side of feeling, and independent of clear logical analysis or fixed and well-comprehended principles—with a tendency to a will that is impulsive and liable to collapse. Such susceptibility is likely to be accompanied by unusual difficulty in giving due weight to those practical considerations, which lead to compromises in politics, to steadiness in labor, to patience in developing the details of science and philosophy, and to the establishment of a firm connection between the higher life of thought and feeling and the details of daily conduct. On the other hand, it is the artistic temperament, the temperament which makes one 'interesting,' the 'clever' mind, the temperament which has a suggestion of genius at its command. . . .

"Japan is the land of much natural scenery that is pre-eminently interesting and picturesque. It is the land of beautiful green mountains and of luxurious and highly variegated flora. It is the land that lends itself to art, to sentiment, to reverie and brooding over the mysteries of nature and of life. But it is also the land of volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, and typhoons; the land under whose thin fair crust, or weird and grotesque superficial beauty, and in whose air and surrounding waters, the mightiest destructive forces of nature slumber and mutter, and betimes break forth with amazing destructive effect. As is the land, so—in many striking respects—are the people that dwell in it. The superficial observer, especially if he himself