No other thing is more difficult than to know yourself although it seems easy to do it. To stand in front of a mirror all day long is not to know yourself. Some people who can’t know themselves no matter how much time passes even though they stand there all day long. There are some cases where the action of standing in front of a mirror itself rather makes it more difficult for you to get to know yourself.
It is said that if you are so much absorbed in putting on your own play, you become unable to notice others’ play. It is easy to deceive a liar. An error which a liar is apt to fall into is to believe undoubtedly that it is only he who tells a lie, but others never tell lies.
Since an actor thinks that he is the only actor, he will not notice that general people play roles much more consciously than he. An actor himself is rather a simple person in his actual life.
(A) My memory was a sieve. I could remember nothing. Dates, names, appointments, faces――everything escaped me. I said to my wife, ‘Catherine, I shall never make a successful politician, for I cannot remember, and that is a prime necessity of politicians.’ My wife told me I must train my memory. So when I came home that night, I sat down alone and spent fifteen minutes trying silently to recall with accuracy the principal events of the day. I could remember but little a first; now I remember that I could not then recall what I had for breakfast. After a few days’ practice I found I could recall more. Events came back to me more minutely, more accurately, and more vividly than at first. After a fortnight or so of this, Catharine said, ‘Why don’t you relate to me the events of the day, instead of recalling them to yourself? It would be interesting, and my interest in it would be a stimulus to you.’ Having great respect for my wife’s opinion, I began a habit of oral confession, as it were, which was continued for over fifty years. Every night, the last before retiring, I told her everything I could remember that had happened to me or about me during the day. I generally recall the dishes I had had for breakfast, dinner, and tea; the people I had seen and what they had said; the editorials I had written on my paper, giving her a brief abstract of them. I mentioned all the letters I had sent and received, and the very language used, as nearly as possible; when I had walked and ridden――I told her everything that had come within my observation. I found I could say my lessons better and better every year, and instead of the practice growing irksome, it became a pleasure to go over again the events of the day. I am indebted to this discipline for a somewhat unusually strong memory, and I recommend the practice to all who wish to store up facts, or expect to have much to do with influencing men.
My view of history is itself a tiny piece of history; and this mainly other people’s history and not my own; for a scholar’s life-work is to add his bucketful of water to the great and growing river of knowledge fed by countless bucketfuls of the kind. If my individual view of history is to be made at all illuminating, or indeed intelligible, it must be presented in its origin, growth, and social and personal setting.
(1)In the current Japan, human characters, such as "whether or not a person is reliable” or "whether or not a person gives importance to his or her word" have become obsolete as the standards for judgment of people. In the first place, even the phrase "an eye for people" became a dead language. (2)"An eye for people" indicates the ability to evaluate a person in front as a net human being without being confused by his or her profile information, however now nobody requests such an ability any more.(3)The ideology is prevailing in the current Japan that human beings should be estimated on the basis of "evidence" of profiles, such as annual income, status, and social power, irrespective of his or her true personality.
Contemporary learning has rapidly been changing. (A)We can obtain knowledge immediately on the Internet without learning from other people or reading books. Therefore, students need not go to universities for the purpose of learning knowledge. If so, what do they learn at universities? To tell the truth, they go to universities in order to know not what has currently been known, but what is unknown now, and to face their possibilities through meeting with other people who have different personalities from theirs. On the Internet, we can obtain already-knowns, but we can’t know any unknowns. A lot of things remain unknown in this world. But, we can’t see such unknowns without asking a proper question about them.
University teachers are those who have had the experience of asking such proper questions through their own researches. Answers for these questions lie not on the Internet, but in the researches of respective researcher. Students learn these researches, ask their own questions, and find their own answers, which constitutes their own identities and lead them to their own possibilities. (B)Learning at universities is not an operation to find yourself between prepared questions and answers, but one to discover unknown yourself in the unknown world. The environment as a university, teachers and officials, and your schoolfellows will support your discovering operation.
Thus, university teachers must have their own answers and questions in their specialized fields, as well as those which have been asked so far. University teachers do not have a teaching license. They only have self-pride and actual achievements as a researcher. (C)This is because they do not teach existing knowledge like elementary, junior high and high school education, but they are requested to teach students how to make their way to unknown answers, and to send the students to the path through which they can meet with unknown themselves. For this purpose, university teachers always have to keep a thorough knowledge of the extent and depth of their specialized fields, also they themselves have to continue to make a challenge to unknowns. From now, the students who learned at universities have not only to adapt themselves to the society, but also to build up a new society or a new world. Universities are just the place where students can expand their possibilities.
Common features behind the differences in our appearances will be surfaced not by asking “why we can’t understand each other,” but by asking “why we can understand each other.”
If you notice these common features, you must have a mental allowance to admit such differences. We should have a belief that “we can potentially understand each other,” paying attention to the fact that we all are brothers and sisters who used to share the same long history, not focusing on only “how people in the world are different each other.”
We are usually living, while making full use of the five senses, such as the senses of taste, sight, touch, hearing, and smell. These five senses, at a glance, seem to be individual, subjective, and physical actions, however actually, they are also cultural and historical actions. How and what do you feel about something, such as softness or hardness you feel when you touch something, sounds you hear in a city, or tastes of food, differs depending on the society, culture, or time in which you have been born and grown up.
Why did I come to learn history? There were various reasons for it, but I was probably sure that I had a vague interest in how our world we are living now has been made up, or why it has formed as a present shape. Further, when digging a bit deeper into this matter, I also felt such that when thinking of the course through which Japan had achieved the modernization while being affected by European countries, I had to know more about such European countries. I had been longing for America when I was a high school student. I was attracted by folk songs that became popular those days, and was also crazy about western movies and the fashions of prestigious universities in the eastern North America. However, once I entered a university, my interest shifted from America to European countries; first to Germany, before long to England, the reason for which I can’t explain clearly even by myself.
If you do something considering the balance of profits and losses, the fruit must be unsatisfactory. Even though you provide someone with every convenience expecting something in return, it is often the case that such a person forgets your convenience completely. On the other hand, a person, whom you helped with good intentions, has been appreciating your help ever since, and sometimes repays you for your kindness when you are really in difficulties. There is a proverb saying that “kindness does not go unrewarded.” It is just a word that aptly expresses a truth in the world of human beings.
