From 1875 to 1876, Nishi Amane had translated Joseph Haven's "Mental Philosophy," Gold and Lincoln, Boston, 1869 (the first edition, 1857), and published it under the title of "Haven-shi Shinrigaku." This book has two important significances in the history of Japanese moral ideas in the early Meiji period. First, Nishi found, in this book, many important philosophical terminologies such as "subject," "object," "reason," "understanding," "sensibilities," "deduction," "induction," "proposition," and so forth, and coined new words corresponding to these philosophical terms: for example, Japanese "shukkan," "kyakukan," "risei," "gosei," "kansei," "en-eki," "kinoh," "meidai," and so forth. These new words he made up have been made use of among Japanese philosophers until today. Therefore, whenever we philosophize in Japanese today, we cannot help making use of these words and might be influenced by Nishi's coinage which, in turn, was based upon both Haven's system of philosophy and Nishi's. Especially, since Nishi was the only philosophers in Japan in those days, most of his new words became the definite philosophical terms at once. Thus, Haven's "Mental Philosophy" had a great influence upon Japanese philosophy including moral philosophy through Nishi's translation. Second, this book made a great contribution to development of Nishi's theory of human nature. In this article, I have tried, first, to clarify what kind of theory of human nature Haven developed in this book, and, second, to trace to what extent Nishi's theory of human nature showed Haven's influence in Nishi's "Chisetsu" and other writings such as "Jinchiron" and "Johchikankeiron," and so forth.
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