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Jogular Morotario Sectory 07
Page 07
Care must be taken, however, not to over-emphasize this extremist tendency. In some respects, I am convinced that it is more apparent than real. The appearance is due to the silent passivity even of those who are really opposed to the new departure. It is natural that the advocates of some new policy should be enthusiastic and noisy. To give the impression to an outsider that the new enthusiasm is universal, those who do not share it have simply to keep quiet. This takes place to some degree in every land, but particularly so in Japan. The silence of their dissent is one of the striking characteristics of the Japanese. It seems to be connected with an abdication of personal responsibility. How often in the experience of the missionary it has happened that his first knowledge of friction in a church, wholly independent and self-supporting and having its own native pastor, is the silent withdrawal of certain members from their customary places of worship. On inquiry it is learned that certain things are being done or said which do not suit them and, instead of seeking to have these matters righted, they simply wash their hands of the whole affair by silent withdrawal.
The vast subject which I have thus lightly skimmed is not without interest, again, from its human implications. Savages as a rule produce enormous families; but then, the infant mortality in savage tribes is proportionally great. Among civilized races, families are smaller, and deaths in infancy are far less numerous. The higher the class or the natural grade of a stock, the larger as a rule the proportion of children safely reared to the adult age. The goal towards which humanity is slowly moving would thus seem to be one where families in most cases will be relatively small--perhaps not more on an average than three to a household--but where most or all of the children brought into the world will be safely reared to full maturity. This is already becoming the rule in certain favored ranks of European society.
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