The Japanese Should Not Bow Down to Christian Ethics
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Down to Earth Series · 9 pages
First published in Lucifer Vol. IV (19), March 1889, pages 80–82, and reprinted in Blavatsky Collected Writings, with an abstract and train of thoughts at the front and a closing list of further reading. The long central section on Colonel Olcott's Japanese tour is reproduced again in “The Religio-Philosophical Journal is neither religious nor philosophical,” elsewhere in this series; a reader following the argument may want both, and the descriptions of each say so.
The opening claim is historical: that the rise and triumph of Christianity and its spread in the West were due originally to a purely political exigency. The article then sets two Japanese voices against each other. The greatest materialist of Japan is reported as advocating that Chinese ethics be replaced by Christian ethics; against him, a President of the Imperial University laments the lack of religious feeling among his countrymen and argues that instead of talking about adopting a foreign religion the Japanese should go abroad and preach their own religion of reason to other countries. Blavatsky's own contribution is a comparison: that in the matter of ethics and common morality European nations are undeniably below the level not only of Japan but of India and every other country called uncivilized — set against the boast of Church and civilization that Christian grace has softened the hearts of men and reformed barbarous customs. The section that follows reports Colonel Olcott's reception by the Buddhist priesthood and his lectures across the country, in which he advised the people to maintain the principles of the Buddhist faith rather than change for western doctrines of any kind, and compared the free and upright bearing of the Japanese with that of the natives of India, whose sentiment of nationality he thought had been numbed by living in an atmosphere of disregard for their own traditions.
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