Part 17

Long training in caution and self-control is indeed an indispensable preparation for official existence; the ability either to keep a position won, or to resign it with honour, depending much upon such training. The most sinister circumstance of official life is the absence of moral freedom,--the absence of the right to act according to one's own convictions of justice. The subordinate, who desires above all things to keep his place, is not supposed to have personal convictions or sympathies--save by permission. He is not the slave of a man, but of a system--a system as old as China. Were human nature perfect, that system would be perfect; but so long as human nature remains what it is now, the system leaves much to be desired. Everything may depend upon the personal character of those temporarily intrusted with higher power; and the only choice left for the most capable servant under a bad master may be to resign or to do wrong. The strong man faces the problem bravely and resigns; but for one strong man there are fifty timid ones. Probably the prospect of a broken career is much less terrifying than the ancient idea of crime attaching to any form of insubordination. As the forms of a religion survive after the faith in doctrine has passed away, so the power of Government to coerce even conscience still remains, though religion is no longer identified with Government. The system of secrecy, implacably enforced, helps to maintain the vague awe that has always attached to the idea of administrative authority; and such authority is practically omnipotent within those limits which I have already indicated. To be favoured by authority means to experience all the illusive pleasure of a suddenly created popularity: an entire community, a whole city, is made by a word to turn all the amiable side of its human nature toward the favourite,--to charm him into the belief that he is worthy of the best that the world can give him. But suppose that the moving powers happen, latter on, to find the favoured man in the way of some policy--lo! at another whispered word he finds himself, without knowing why, the public enemy. None speak to him or salute him or smile upon him--save ironically: long-esteemed friends pass him by without recognition, or, if pursued, reply to his most earnest questions with all possible brevity and caution. Most likely they do not know the "why" of the matter: they only know that orders have been given, and that into the reason of orders it is not good to enquire. Even the street-children know this much, and mock the despondent victim of fortune; even the dogs seem instinctively to divine the change and bark at him as he passes by.... Such is the power of official displeasure; and the penalty of a blunder or a breach of discipline may extend considerably further--but in feudal times the offender would have been simply told to perform harakiri. Sometimes, when the wrong men get into power, the force of authority may be used for malevolent ends; and in such event it requires not a little courage to disobey an order to act against conscience. What saved Japanese society in former ages from the worst results of this form of tyranny, was the moral sentiment of the mass,--the common feeling that underlay all submission to authority, and remained always capable, if pressed upon too brutally, of compelling a reaction. Conditions to-day are more favourable to justice; but it requires much tact, steadiness, and resolution on the part of a rising official to steer himself safely among the reefs and the whirlpools of the new political life.

* * * * * *

The reader will now be able to understand the general character, aim, and results of official education as a system. It will be also worth while to consider in detail certain phases of student-life, which equally prove the survival of old conditions and old traditions. I can speak about these matters from personal experience as a teacher,--an experience extending over nearly thirteen years.

Readers of Goethe will remember the trustful docility of the student received by Doctor Mephistopheles in the First Part of Faust, and the very different demeanour of the same student when he reappears, in the Second Part, as Baccalaureus. More than one foreign professor in Japan must have been reminded of that contrast by personal experience, and must have wondered whether some one of the early educational advisers to the Japanese Government did not play, without malice prepense, the very role of Mephistopheles.... The gentle boy who, with innocent reverence, makes his visit of courtesy to the foreign teacher, bringing for gift a cluster of iris-flowers or odorous spray of plum-blossoms,--the boy who does whatever he is told, and charms by an earnestness, a trustfulness, a grace of manner rarely met with among Western lads of the same age,--is destined to undergo the strangest of transformations long before becoming a baccalaureus. You may meet with him a few years later, in the uniform of some Higher School, and find it difficult to recognize your former pupil,--now graceless, taciturn, secretive, and inclined to demand as a right what could scarcely, with propriety, be requested as a favour. You may find him patronizing,--possibly something worse. Later on, at the University, he becomes more formally correct, but also more far away,--so very far away from his boyhood that the remoteness is a pain to one who remembers that boyhood. The Pacific is less wide and deep than the invisible gulf now extending between the mind of the stranger and the mind of the student. The foreign professor is now regarded merely as a teaching-machine; and he is more than likely to regret any effort made to maintain an intimate relation with his pupils. Indeed the whole formal system of official education is opposed to the development of any such relation. I am speaking of general facts in this connexion, not of merely personal experiences. No matter what the foreigner may do in the hope of finding his way into touch with the emotional life of his students, or in the hope of evoking that interest in certain studies which renders possible an intellectual tie, he must toil in vain. Perhaps in two or three cases out of a thousand he may obtain something precious,--a lasting and kindly esteem, based upon moral comprehension; but should he wish for more he must remain in the state of the Antarctic explorer, seeking, month after month, to no purpose, some inlet through endless cliffs of everlasting ice. Now the case of the Japanese professor proves the barrier natural, to a large extent. The Japanese professor can ask for extraordinary efforts and, obtain them; he can afford to be easily familiar with his students outside of class; and he can get what no stranger can obtain,--their devotion. The difference has been attributed to race-feeling; but it cannot be so easily and vaguely explained.

Something of race-sentiment there certainly is; it were impossible that there should not be. No inexperienced foreigner can converse for one half hour with any Japanese--at least with any Japanese who has not sojourned abroad---and avoid saying something that jars upon Japanese good taste or sentiment; and few--perhaps, none--among untravelled Japanese can maintain a brief conversation in any European tongue without making some startling impression upon the foreign listener. Sympathethic understanding, between minds so differently constructed, is next to impossible. But the foreign professor who looks for the impossible--who expects from Japanese students the same quality of intelligent comprehension that he might reasonably expect from Western students--is naturally disturbed. "Why must there always, remain the width of a world between us?" is a question often asked and rarely answered.

Some of the reasons should by this time be obvious to my reader; but one among them and the most, curious--will not. Before stating it I must observe that while the relation between foreign instructor and the Japanese student is artificial, that between the Japanese teacher and the student is traditionally one of sacrifice and obligation. The inertia encountered by the stranger, the indifference which chills him at all times, are due in great part to the misapprehension arising from totally opposite conceptions of duty. Old sentiment lingers long after old forms have passed away; and how much of feudal Japan survives in modern Japan, no stranger can readily divine. Probably the bulk of existing sentiment is hereditary sentiment: the ancient ideals have not yet been replaced by fresh ones.... In feudal times the teacher taught without salary: he was expected to devote all his time, thought, and strength to his profession. High honour was attached to that profession; and the matter of remuneration was not discussed,--the instructor trusting wholly to the gratitude of parents and pupils. Public sentiment bound them to him with a bond that could not be broken. Therefore a general, upon the eve of an assault, would take care that his former teacher should have an opportunity to escape from the place beleaguered. The tie between teacher and pupil was in force second only to the tie between parent and child. The teacher sacrificed everything for his pupil: the pupil was ready at all times to die for his teacher. Now, indeed, the hard and selfish aspects of Japanese character are coming to the surface. But a single fact will sufficiently indicate how much of the old ethical sentiment persists under the new and rougher surface: Nearly all the higher educational work accomplished in Japan represents, though aided by Government, the results of personal sacrifice.

From the summit of society to the base, this sacrificial spirit rules. That a large part of the private income of their Imperial Majesties has, for many years, been devoted to public education is well known; but that every person of rank or wealth or high position educates students at his private expense, is not generally known. In the majority of cases this help is entirely gratuitous; in a minority of cases, the expenses of the student are advanced only, to be repaid by instalments at some future time. The reader is doubtless aware that the daimyo in former times used to dispose of the bulk of their incomes in supporting and helping their retainers; supplying hundreds, in some cases thousands, and in some few cases, even tens of thousands, of persons with the necessaries of life; and exacting in return military service, loyalty, and obedience. Those former daimyo or their successors--particularly those who are still large landholders--now vie with each other in assisting education. All who can afford it are educating sons or grandsons or descendants of former retainers; the subjects of this patronage being annually selected from among the students of schools established in the former daimiates. It is only the rich noble who can now support a number of students gratuitously, year after year; the poorer men of rank cannot care for many. But all, or very nearly all, maintain some,--and this even in cases where the patron's income is so small that the expense could not be borne unless the student were pledged to repay it after graduation. In some instances, half of the cost is borne by the patron; the student being required to repay the rest.

Now these aristocratic examples are extensively followed through other grades of society. Merchants, bankers, and manufacturers--all rich men of the commercial and industrial classes--are educating students. Military officers, civil service officials, physicians, lawyers, men of every profession, in short, are doing the same thing. Persons whose incomes are too small to permit of much generosity are able to help students by employing them as door-keepers, messengers, tutors,--giving them board and lodging, and a little pocket-money at times, in return, for light services. In Tokyo, and in most of the large cities, almost every large house is guarded by students who are being thus assisted. As for what the teachers do--that requires special mention.

The majority of teachers in the public schools do not receive salaries enabling them to help students with money; but all teachers earning more than the bare necessary give aid of some sort. Among the instructors and professors of the higher educational establishments, the helping of students seems to be thought of as a matter of course,--so much a matter of course that we might suspect a new "tyranny of custom," especially in view of the smallness of official salaries. But no tyranny of custom would explain the pleasure of sacrifice and the strange persistence of feudal idealism which are revealed by some extraordinary facts. For example: A certain University professor is known to have supported and educated a large number of students by dividing among them, during many years, nearly the whole of his salary. He lodged, clothed, boarded, and educated them, bought their books, and paid their fees,--reserving for himself only the cost of his living, and reducing even that cost by living upon hot sweet potatoes. (Fancy a foreign professor in Japan putting himself upon a diet of bread and water for the purpose of educating gratuitously a number of poor young men!) I know of two other cases nearly as remarkable; the helper, in one instance, being an old man of more than seventy, who still devotes all his means, time, and knowledge to his ancient ideal of duty. How much obscure sacrifice of this kind has been performed by those least able to afford it never will be known: indeed, the publication of the facts would only give pain. I am guilty of some indiscretion in mentioning even the cases brought to my attention--though human nature is honoured by the mention.... Now it should be evident that while Japanese students are accustomed to witness self-denial of this sort on the part of native professors, they cannot be much impressed by any manifestation of interest or sympathy on the part of the foreign professor, who, though receiving a higher salary than his Japanese colleagues, has no reason and small inclination to imitate their example.

Surely this heroic fact of education sustained by personal sacrifices, in the face of unimaginable difficulties, is enough to redeem much humbug and wrong. In spite of the corruption which has been of late years rife in educational circles,--in spite of official scandals, intrigues, and shams,--all needed reforms can be hoped for while the spirit of generous self-denial continues to rule the world of teachers and students. I can venture also the opinion that most of the official scandals and failures have resulted from the interference of politics with modern education, or from attempting to imitate foreign conventional methods totally at variance with national moral experience. Where Japan has remained true to her old moral ideals she has done nobly and well: where she has needlessly departed from them, sorrow and trouble have been the natural consequences.

There are yet other facts in modern education suggesting even more forcibly how much of the old life remains hidden under the new conditions, and how rigidly race-character has become fixed in the higher types of mind. I refer chiefly to the results of Japanese education abroad,--a higher special training in German, English, French, or American Universities. In some directions these results, to foreign observation at least, appear to be almost negative. Considering the immense psychological differentiation,--the total oppositeness of mental structure and habit,--it is astonishing that Japanese students have been able to do what they actually have done at foreign Universities. To graduate at any European or American University of mark, with a mind shaped by Japanese culture, filled with Chinese learning, crammed with ideographs,--is a prodigious feat: scarcely less of a feat than it would be for an American student to graduate at a Chinese University. Certainly the men sent abroad to study are carefully selected for ability; and one indispensable requisite for the mission is a power of memory incomparably superior to the average Occidental memory, and different altogether as to quality,--a memory for details;--nevertheless, the feat is amazing. But with the return to Japan of these young scholars, there is commonly an end of effort in the direction of the speciality studied,--unless it happens to have been a purely practical subject. Does this signify incapacity for independent work upon Occidental lines? incapacity for creative thought? lack of constructive imagination? disinclination or indifference? The history of that terrible mental and moral discipline to which the race was so long subjected would certainly suggest such limitations in the modern Japanese mind. Perhaps these questions cannot yet be answered,--except, I imagine, as regards the indifference, which is self-evident and undisguised. But, independently of any question of capacity or inclination, there is this fact to be considered,--that proper encouragement has not yet been given to home-scholarship. The plain truth is that young men are sent to foreign seats of learning for other ends than to learn how to devote the rest of their lives to the study of psychology, philology, literature, or modern philosophy. They are sent abroad to fit them for higher posts in Government-service; and their foreign study is but one obligatory episode in their official career. Each has to qualify himself for special duty by learning how Western people study and think and feel in certain directions, and by ascertaining the range of educational progress in those directions; but he is not ordered to think or to feel like Western people--which would, in any event, be impossible for him. He has not, and probably could not have, any deep personal interest in Western learning outside of the domain of applied science. His business is to learn how to understand such matters from the Japanese, not from the Occidental, point of view. But he performs his part well, does exactly what he has been told to do, and rarely anything more. His value to his Government is doubled or quadrupled by his allotted experience; but at home--except during a few years of expected duty as professor or lecturer--he will probably use that experience only as a psychological costume of ceremony,--a mental uniform to be donned when official occasion may require.

It is otherwise in the case of men sent abroad for scientific studies requiring, not only intelligence and memory, but natural quickness of hand and eye,--surgery, medicine, military specialities. I doubt whether the average efficiency of Japanese surgeons can be surpassed. The study of war, I need hardly say, is one for which the national mind and character have inherited aptitude. But men sent abroad merely to win a foreign University-degree, and destined, after a term of educational duty, to higher official life, appear to set small value upon their foreign acquirements. However, even if they could win distinction in Europe by further effort at home, that effort would have to be made at a serious pecuniary sacrifice, and its results could not as yet be fairly appreciated by their own countrymen.

Some of us have wondered at times what the old Egyptians or the old Greeks would have done if suddenly brought into dangerous contact with a civilization like our own,--a civilization of applied mathematics, with sciences and branch-sciences of which the mere names would fill a dictionary. I think that the history of modern Japan suggests very clearly what any wise people, with a civilization based upon ancestor-worship, would have done. They would have speedily reconstructed their patriarchal society to meet the sudden peril; they would have adopted, with astonishing success, all the scientific machinery that they could use; they would have created a formidable army and a highly efficient navy; they would have sent their young aristocrats abroad to study alien convention, and to qualify for diplomatic duty; they would have established a new system of education, and obliged all their children to study many new things;--but toward the higher emotional and intellectual life of that alien civilization, they would naturally exhibit indifference: its best literature, its philosophy, its broader forms of tolerant religion could make no profound appeal to their moral and social experience.

INDUSTRIAL DANGER

Everywhere the course of human civilization has been shaped by the same evolutional law; and as the earlier history of the ancient European communities can help us to understand the social conditions of Old Japan, so a later period of the same history can help us to divine something of the probable future of the New Japan. It has been shown by the author of La Cite Antique that the history of all the ancient Greek and Latin communities included four revolutionary periods.* The first revolution had everywhere for its issue the withdrawal of political power from the priest-king; who was nevertheless allowed to retain the religious authority. The second revolutionary period witnessed the breaking up of the gens or (Greek genos). the enfranchisement of the client from the authority of the patron, and several important changes in the legal constitution of the family. The third revolutionary period saw the weakening of the religious and military aristocracy, the entrance of the common people into the rights of citizenship, and the rise of a democracy of wealth,--presently to be opposed by a democracy of poverty. The fourth revolutionary period witnessed the first bitter struggles between rich and poor, the final triumph of anarchy, and the consequent establishment of a new and horrible form of despotism,--the despotism of the popular Tyrant.

To these four revolutionary periods, the social history of Old Japan presents but two correspondences. The first Japanese revolutionary period was represented by the Fujiwara usurpation of the imperial civil and military authority,--after which event the aristocracy, religious and military, really governed Japan down to our own time. All the events of the rise of the military power and the concentration of authority under the Tokugawa Shogunate properly belong to the first revolutionary period. At the time of the opening of Japan, society had not evolutionally advanced beyond a stage corresponding to that of the antique Western societies in the seventh or eighth century before Christ. The second revolutionary period really began only with the reconstruction of society in 1871. But within the space of a single generation thereafter, Japan entered upon her third revolutionary period. Already the influence of the elder aristocracy is threatened by the sudden rise of a new oligarchy of wealth,--a new industrial power probably destined to become omnipotent in politics. The disintegration (now proceeding) of the clan, the changes in the legal constitution of the family, the entrance of the people into the enjoyment of political rights, must all tend to hasten the coming transfer of power. There is every indication that, in the present order of things, the third revolutionary period will run its course rapidly; and then a fourth revolutionary period, fraught with serious danger, would be in immediate prospect.

Consider the bewildering rapidity of recent changes,--from the reconstruction of society in 1871 to the opening of the first national parliament in 1891. Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the nation had remained in the condition common to European patriarchal communities twenty-six hundred years ago: society had indeed entered upon a second period of integration, but had traversed only one great revolution. And then the country was suddenly hurried through two more social revolutions of the most extraordinary kind,--signalized by the abolition of the daimiates, the suppression of the military class, the substitution of a plebeian for an aristocratic army, popular enfranchisement, the rapid formalism of a new commonalty. industrial expansion, the rise of a new aristocracy of wealth, and popular representation in government! Old Japan had never developed a wealthy and powerful middle class: she had not even approached that stage of industrial development which, in the ancient European societies, naturally brought about the first political struggles between rich and poor. Her social organization made industrial oppression impossible: the commercial classes were kept at the bottom of society,--under the feet even of those who, in more highly evolved communities, are most at the mercy of money-power. But now those commercial classes, set free and highly privileged, are silently and swiftly ousting the aristocratic ruling-class from power,--are becoming supremely important. And under the new order of things, forms of social misery, never before known in the history of the race, are being developed. Some idea of this misery may be obtained from the fact that the number of poor people in Tokyo unable to pay their annual resident-tax is upwards of 50,000; yet the amount of the tax is only about 20 sen, or 5 pence English money. Prior to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a minority there was never any such want in any part of Japan,--except, of course, as a temporary consequence of war.

The early history of European civilization supplies analogies. In the Greek and Latin communities, up to the time of the dissolution of the gens, there was no poverty in the modern meaning of that word. Slavery. with some few exceptions, existed only in the mild domestic form; there were yet no commercial oligarchies, and no industrial oppressions; and the various cities and states were ruled, after political power had been taken from the early kings, by military aristocracies which also exercised religious functions. There was yet little trade in the modern signification of the term; and money, as current coinage, came into circulation only in the seventh century before Christ. Misery did not exist. Under any patriarchal system, based upon ancestor-worship, there is no misery, as a consequence of poverty, except such as may be temporarily created by devastation or famine. If want thus comes, it comes to all alike. In such a state of society everybody is in the service of somebody, and receives in exchange for service all the necessaries of life: there is no need for any one to trouble himself about the question of living. Also, in such a patriarchal community, which is self-sufficing, there is little need of money: barter takes the place of trade.... In all these respects, the condition of Old Japan offered a close parallel to the conditions of patriarchal society in ancient Europe. While the uji or clan existed, there was no misery except as a result of war, famine, or pestilence. Throughout society--excepting the small commercial class--the need of money was rare; and such coinage as existed was little suited to general circulation. Taxes were paid in rice and other produce. As the lord nourished his retainers, so the samurai cared for his dependants, the farmer for his labourers, the artizan for his apprentices and journeymen, the merchant for his clerks. Everybody was fed; and there was no need, in ordinary times at least, for any one to go hungry. It was only with the breaking-up of the clan-system in Japan that the possibilities of starvation for the worker first came into existence. And as, in antique Europe, the enfranchised client-class and plebeian-class developed, under like conditions, into a democracy clamouring for suffrage and all political rights, so in Japan have the common people developed the political instinct, in self-protection.

It will be remembered how, in Greek and Roman society, the aristocracy founded upon religious tradition and military power had to give way to an oligarchy of wealth, and how there subsequently came into existence a democratic form of government,--democratic, not in the modern, but in the old Greek meaning. At a yet later day the results of popular suffrage were the breaking-up of this democratic government, and the initiation of an atrocious struggle between rich and poor. After that strife had begun there was no more security for life or property until the Roman conquest enforced order.... Now it seems not unlikely that there will he witnessed in Japan, at no very distant day, a strong tendency to repeat the history of the old Greek anarchies. With the constant increase of poverty and pressure of population, and the concomitant accumulation of wealth in the hands of a new industrial class, the peril is obvious. Thus far the nation has patiently borne all changes. relying upon the experience of its past, and trusting implicitly to its rulers. But should wretchedness be so permitted to augment that the question of how to keep from starving becomes imperative for the millions, the long patience and the long trust may fail. And then, to repeat a figure effectively used by Professor Huxley, the Primitive Man, finding that the Moral Man has landed him in the valley of the shadow of death, may rise up to take the management of affairs into his own hands, and fight savagely for the right of existence. As popular instinct is not too dull to divine the first cause of this misery in the introduction of Western industrial methods, it is unpleasant to reflect what such an upheaval might signify. But nothing of moment has yet been done to ameliorate the condition of the wretched class of operatives, now estimated to exceed half a million.

M. de Coulanges has pointed out* that the absence of individual liberty was the real cause of the disorders and the final ruin of the Greek societies.

Rome suffered less, and survived, and dominated,--because within her boundaries the rights of the individual had been more respected.... Now the absence of individual freedom in modern Japan would certainly appear to be nothing less than a national danger. For those very habits of unquestioning obedience, and loyalty, and respect for authority, which made feudal society possible, are likely to render a true democratic regime impossible, and would tend to bring about a state of anarchy. Only races long accustomed to personal liberty,--liberty to think about matters of ethics apart from matters of government,--liberty to consider questions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, independently of political authority,--are able to face without risk the peril now menacing Japan. For should social disintegration take in Japan the same course which it followed in the old European societies,--unchecked by any precautionary legislation,--and so bring about another social revolution, the consequence could scarcely be less than utter ruin. In the antique world of Europe, the total disintegration of the patriarchal system occupied centuries: it was slow, and it was normal--not having been brought about by external forces. In Japan, on the contrary, this disintegration is taking place under enormous outside pressure, operating with the rapidity of electricity and steam. In Greek societies the changes were effected in about three hundred years; in Japan it is hardly more than thirty years since the patriarchal system was legally dissolved and the industrial system reshaped; yet already the danger of anarchy is in sight, and the population--astonishingly augmented by more than ten millions--already begins to experience all the forms of misery developed by want under industrial conditions.

It was perhaps inevitable that the greatest freedom accorded under the new order of things should have been given in the direction of greatest danger. Though the Government cannot be said to have done much for any form of competition within the sphere of its own direct control, it has done even more than could have been reasonably expected on behalf of national industrial competition. Loans have been lavishly advanced. subsidies generously allowed; and, in spite of various panics and failures, the results have been prodigious. Within thirty years the value of articles manufactured for export has risen from half a million to five hundred million yen. But this immense development has been effected at serious cost in other directions. The old methods of family production--and therefore most of the beautiful industries and arts, for which Japan has been so long famed--now seem doomed beyond hope; and instead of the ancient kindly relations between master and workers, there have been brought into existence--with no legislation to restrain inhumanity--all the horrors of factory-life at its worst. The new combinations of capital have actually reestablished servitude, under harsher forms than ever were imagined under the feudal era; the misery of the women and children subjected to that servitude is a public scandal, and proves strange possibilities of cruelty on the part of a people once renowned for kindness,--kindness even to animals.

There is now a humane outcry for reform; and earnest efforts have been made, and will be made, to secure legislation for the protection of operatives. But, as might be expected, these efforts have been hitherto strongly opposed by manufacturing companies and syndicates with the declaration that any Government interference with factory management will greatly hamper, if not cripple, enterprise, and hinder competition with foreign industry. Less than twenty years ago the very same arguments were used in England to oppose the efforts then being made to improve the condition of the industrial classes; and that opposition was challenged by Professor Huxley in a noble address, which every Japanese legislator would do well to read to-day. Speaking of the reforms in progress during 1888. the professor said:

"If it is said that the carrying out of such arrangements as those indicated must enhance the cost of production, and thus handicap the producer in the race of competition. I venture, in the first place. to doubt the fact; but, if it be so, it results that industrial society has to face a dilemma, either alternative of which threatens destruction.

"On the one hand, a population, the labour of which is sufficiently remunerated, may be physically and morally healthy, and socially stable, but may fail in industrial competition by reason of the dearness of its produce. On the other hand, a population, the labour of which is insufficiently remunerated, must become physically and morally unhealthy, and socially unstable; and though it may succeed for a while in competition, by reason of the cheapness of its produce, it must in the end fall, through hideous misery and degradation, to utter ruin.

"Well, if these be the only alternatives, let us for ourselves and our children choose the former, and, if need be, starve like men. But I do not believe that a stable society, made up of healthy, vigorous, instructed, and self-ruling people would ever incur serious risk of that fate. They are not likely to be troubled with many competitors of the same character just yet; and they may be safely trusted to find ways of holding their own."*

If the future of Japan could depend upon her army and her navy, upon the high courage of her people and their readiness to die by the hundred thousand for ideals of honour and of duty, there would be small cause for alarm in the present state of affairs. Unfortunately her future must depend upon other qualities than courage, other abilities than those of sacrifice; and her struggle hereafter must be one in which her social traditions will place her at an immense disadvantage. The capacity for industrial competition cannot be made to depend upon the misery of women and children; it must depend upon the intelligent freedom of the individual; and the society which suppresses this freedom, or suffers it to be suppressed, must remain too rigid for competition with societies in which the liberties of the individual are strictly maintained. While Japan continues to think and to act by groups, even by groups of industrial companies, so long she must always continue incapable of her best. Her ancient social experience is not sufficient to avail her for the future international struggle,--rather it must sometimes impede her as so much dead weight. Dead, in the ghostliest sense of the word,--the viewless pressure upon her life of numberless vanished generations. She will have not only to strive against colossal odds in her rivalry with more plastic and more forceful societies; she will have to strive much more against the power of her phantom past.

Yet it were a grievous error to imagine that she has nothing further to gain from her ancestral faith. All her modern successes have been aided by it; and all her modern failures have been marked by needless breaking with its ethical custom. She could compel her people, by a simple fiat, to adopt the civilization of the West, with all its pain and struggle, only because that people had been trained for ages in submission and loyalty and sacrifice; and the time has not yet come in which she can afford to cast away the whole of her moral past. More freedom indeed she requires,--but freedom restrained by wisdom; freedom to think and act and strive for self as well as for others,--not freedom to oppress the weak, or to exploit the simple. And the new cruelties of her industrial life can find no justification in the traditions of her ancient faith, which exacted absolute obedience from the dependant, but equally required the duty of kindness from the master. In so far as she has permitted her people to depart from the way of kindness, she herself has surely departed from the Way of the Gods....