Herein may be seen the great benefit of carefully studying the minds of
those whom we seek to convert. The Christian preacher in Japan who uses
our terms "heaven," "home," "mother," "father," "family," "wife,"
"people," "love," "reverence," "virtue," "chastity," etc., will find
that his hearers may indeed receive them, but not at all with the same
mental images and associations, nor with the same proportion and depth,
that these words command in western thought and hearing. One must be
exceedingly careful, not only in translating terms which have been used
by Confucius in the Chinese texts, but also in selecting and rendering
the current expressions of the Japanese teachers and philosophers. In
order to understand each other, Orientals and Occidentals need a great
deal of mutual intellectual drilling, without which there will be waste
of money, of time, of brains and of life.
The Five Relations.
Let us now glance at the fundamentals of the Confucian ethics--the Five
Relations--as they were taught in the comparatively simple system which
prevailed before the new orthodoxy was proclaimed by Sung schoolmen.
First. Although each of the Chinese and Japanese emperors is supposed to
be, and is called, "father of the people," yet it would be entirely
wrong to imagine that the phrase implies any such relation, as that of
William the Silent to the Dutch, or of Washington to the American
nation.
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