Volume II Part 20 (2/2)

KOBE, March, 1895

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--You will scarcely be able to believe ine; but I must confess that your letter on ”shall” and ”will” is a sort of revelation in one sense--it convinces lish culture, really feel a sharp distinction of ht and sound of the words ”will” and ”shall” I confess, also, that I never have felt such a distinction, and cannot feel it now I have been guided chiefly by euphony, and the sensation of ”will” as softer and gentler than ”shall” The word ”shall” in the second person especially has for lish harshness and menace,--memories of school, perhaps I shall study the differences by your teaching, and try to avoid mistakes, but I think I shall never be able to feel the distinction The tone toFor example, the Western cowboy says ”Yes, you will, Mister,” in a tone that lishman's ”you shall” I know this confession is horrid--but there's the truth of the e of which I cannot understand the real spirit I trust the tendency to substitute ”will” for ”shall” which you have noticed, and which I have always felt, is going eventually to render the use of ”shall” with the first person obsolete I am ”colour blind” to the values you assert; and I suspect that theraces--the raw people--are also blind thereunto It is the people, after all, who e in the end, and in the direction of least resistance

You did not quite catch

I did not hint you denied heredity (though your last letter e denials of it, I think) I believe it is an accepted general rule, for exa parents of different races can learn even two languages equally well: in other cases, one language gains at the expense of the other Creoles exemplify this rule Toys are related to the aesthetic faculty, to the play-iinative capacity These differ really in different races; and represent, not individual education at all, but the sum of racial experiences under certain conditions I cannot believe for a lish child born in japan could feel the sa at a japanese picture as the sensation felt by a japanese child when looking at the salish children in , and in other cases showing a decided preference for fat Only a very large nueneral rule in the case of English children born in japan The evidence you cite seeeneral tendencies) The psychical fact about feelings and emotions is that they are inheritances, just as much as the colour of hair, or the size of li--are similarly inherited They are outside of the individual experience as much as a birthical scribbling,--but it is sufficient to say that as all feelings are the result of motions in nervous structure, the volu is predetermined in each individual by the character of nerve-tissue and its arrangement and complexity In no two individuals are the nervous structures exactly the same; and the differences in races or individuals are consequent upon the differences in quality, variety, and volu each life

”The experience-hypothesis,” says Spencer, ”is inadequate to account for emotional phenomena It is even more at fault in respect to the enitions The doctrine that all the desires, all the sentienerated by the experiences of the individual, is so glaringly at variance with facts that I wonder how any one should ever have entertained it” And he cites ”the multiform passions of the infant, displayed before there has been any such amount of experience as could possibly account for theument as to whether each particular character--with all its possibilities, intellectual or emotional--is not predetermined by the character of nervous structure, slowly evolved by millions of billions of experiences in the past As the differences in the ancestral sums of experiences, so the differences in the psychical life Varying enorlish and japanese, it is i in one race is exactly parallelled by any feeling in the other It is equally is of a japanese child can be the sa physical proof to the contrary would be afforded by a comparative study of the two nervous structures

To say, therefore, that the sight of a toy--adjusted exactly by the experience of the race to the experience of the individual--produces on the mind of a japanese child the salish child born in japan and brought up by japanese only, would be to deny all our y The pleasure of the japanese child in its toy is the pleasure of the dead

Ever faithfully, LAFCADIO HEARN

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

KOBE, April, 1895

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--”The law of heredity is unliy,” vol I, chapter ”Heredity”) ”Soue belief [like yours?] that the law of heredity applies only to main characters of structure, and not to details; or that though it applies to such details as constitute differences of species, it does not apply to smaller details The circuree qualified by the tendency to variation (whichis but an indirect result of the tendency to repetition) leads so of the evidencewill rey,” vol I, p 239)

Your statement that the ”weak person will always remain weak,” but that ”the manifestations of his weakness will surely depend on the nature of the obstacles in his way,” is a proof that you do not perceive the full reach of the explanation The manifestations of weakness may be evoked by obstacles, but the nature of thosein co hereditary, the nature of the obstacle cannot change it

The case of the Northern nations seeest Olaf Trygvesson and others never really changed the national religion, except in nae would have been possible The worshi+p of Odin and Thor continued under the name of Christ and the Saints,--and still continues to so-off of ecclesiastical power at a later day,--the protestantizing of the Northern races,--is certainly the manifestation in history of the same fierce love of freedolish limitation of monarchical power, the history of the constitution, etc So with the superiority of English and Norse seas still coes you cite as evidence of the non-influence of heredity really prove it: they are, s of colour, and do not reach down into the national life Variations are the result of heredity, not the exceptions to it The explanation of this fact would necessitate, however, a long discussion on the deepening or weakening of those channels of nerve-force which are the river-courses of life and thought Siht as well as of body--is the consequence, not the contradiction, of inheritance So with instinct,--which is organized enius, which represents accurowths)

I fear you think of Galton only when you lirowth is touched by the larger : Galton's wonderful books represent raph of the subject

The underlying principles of evolution--the deep laws of physiological growth and development--involve far vaster and profounder consideration of the subject Inheritance is no ”fad:” it means you and me and the world and our central sun

My text was plain,--but you have forgotten it I spoke of ”ancestral pleasure,” ”hereditary delight” You deny their possibility The toys are not ancestral, of course, nor did I say they were,--but they appealed to ancestral feeling Why? All pleasure is hereditary--every feeling is inherited Why, then, say so? Because in this case we are considering race-feelings widely differentiated frohostly side of the question is the beautiful one, and one which you would not deny without exa the evidence? Perhaps you think that the first time you saw Fuji or Miyanoshi+ta, you had really a new sensation But you had nothing of the kind The sensations of that new experience in your own life were millions of years old! Far from simple is the commonest of our pleasures, but a layer, infinitely multiple, of myriads of millions of ancestral impressions Try to analyze the sensation of pleasure in a sunrise, or the smell of hay, and how soon we are lost We can only classify the elements of such a pleasure ”by bundles,” so to speak

Itsoul to perceive itself not individual and original, but an infinite coood should subsequently expand The thought that one's strength is the strength of one's ancestors--of a host innuer consolation And here is the poetry of the thing You are my friend B H C But you are much more--you are also Captain B H, and a host of others--doubtless Viking and Nor back into the weird twilight of the Northern Gods

Soscreed: it is too full of dry stuff, and on reading it over I find that my enthusiasm betrayed me into several wild misstatements

I am sorry about your cold, and I can sympathize; for I also have been ill, and ht to-day, and so are we all

Wish I were nineteen years old, and, like Ben, going to sea As a boy, I cried and o to sea: you are too near-sighted” Perhaps I was saved from disillusions

You know Frederick Soulie's ”Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait”

There was an unconscious recognition of heredity,--before y had been synthetized

Ever with best wishes and regards, LAFCADIO HEARN

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

KOBE, April, 1895