144 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
by a government and laws. The life is spontaneous in society. It has something of constraint in the state. Likewise people can be a dispersed multitude. The nation is a coherent mass. In the earlier stages of history, in primitive humanity or with the arrested types of present humanity, there are already peoples and societies ; these are not known either as nations or as states. RENE WORMS, in Revue Internationale de sociologie, March, 1903. A. B.
Socialism in Japan. The vigorous manner in which the police authorities recently prevented the holding of a gigantic labor meeting organized by the Niroku Shimpo has given rise to a considerable amount of journalistic criticism. Why the police took this apparently high-handed measure we do not know for certain, as no official explanation has been given. It is, however, suggested in more than one quarter that the police interfered with the Niroku's project because they had reason to suspect the promoters of the meeting of socialistic aims. This suggestion has an air of probability in view of the preponderance of avowed socialists among those who were to speak at a lecture meeting, which the disappointed projectors of the labor meeting proposed to hold afterwards, and which was also suppressed by the police. If this explanation be trustworthy, we should think that the police were extremely ill- advised in interfering with the carrying out of the Niroku's labor gathering and lecture meeting. If it was the socialistic bugbear that frightened the police into the summary procedure in question, we are inclined to believe that their excited fancy conjured up a danger which has no substantial existence. Socialistic doctrines have, it is true, found a lodgment in the section of the educated class, and their votaries appear to be increasing in number and importance. These doctrines occasionally find expression in the columns of the Rddd Sekai, the Niroku, the Yorozu and a few other organs, as well as from the popular platform. With all this apparent practical vitality, we may safely state that socialism is in this country still in the stage of academic discussion, and that the day when it will assume practical significance is as yet, if such a day is ever to come, in the far distant future. So far as the mass of the people are concerned, they show as yet no sign of fundamental discontent with the present social order. This is so, not because they are less intelligent than people of the same class in the Occident, but because the conditions of life among us are such that there is little occasion for them to wish for any radical change in the social con- stitution. Happily or unhappily, according to the way in which the matter is looked at, the struggle for existence here has none of that sharp and unfeeling intensity which is calculated to engender in the breasts of its unfortunate victims in the West a deep and sullen hostility to the present order of things. Society here has, for centur- ies, been constructed on principles fundamentally different from those obtaining in the . West. Our society is more communistic in its character than theirs, and we are more forbearing with, and helpful to, each other than the European peoples. It is true that, since the introduction of occidental civilization, great changes are taking place in our conditions of life, but amidst all these changes the fundamental characteristic of our social organization still remains intact, and is not likely to be fully effaced, although it will probably be modified more or less owing to the new influences at work. Under these circumstances, it seems to us that socialistic doctrines may spread among us and may possibly benefit us in various ways, but are not likely to lead to popular agitations of a character inimical to the public order and tranquility. If anything tends to pro- mote the growth of such dangers, it may possibly be, it is to be feared, cases of unnecessary official interference like that under consideration. Japan Times, April 8, 1903.
