As these missionaries, however, were at least cunning, if not intelligent in a good sense, it would not have been impossible for them to achieve something in the domain of the moral education of the nation, if they could only have understood the real state of Japan of that time. On the contrary, their comprehension of our country and of our forefathers was far wide of the mark. Most of them had expected to find in Japan an El Dorado inhabited by primitive folks of a very low grade of intelligence, where they could play their parts gloriously as missionaries by preaching the Gospel in the wilderness. They had not dreamt that the culture possessed by the Japanese of that time, though for the most part borrowed from China, was superior to that of some still uncivilised parts of Europe, for the difference in the form of civilisation deceived them in their judgment of the value of Eastern culture. When they set their feet on Japanese soil, therefore, they soon discovered that they had been grossly mistaken, and then running to the opposite extreme they fell into the error of overestimation. Yet they did not stop at this. This first misconception on the part of the missionaries about Japan left in them an ineradicable prejudice. They became very niggards in seeing things Japanese in an impartial light, and constituted themselves consciously or unconsciously fault-finders of the people, and unfortunately the Japan of that time furnished them with much material to corroborate their low opinion. The result was that while on the one hand the Japanese were praised far above their real value, they were stigmatised equally far below their real merits. Regrettable as it was for Japan to have received such reprehensible people as pioneers of Western civilisation, it was also pitiable that Christianity, which had been fervently embraced by a large number of Japanese, was once rooted out chiefly on account of the incredible folly of these missionaries, who fermented trouble and embroiled themselves in numberless intrigues, which were quite useless and unnecessary as regards the cause of Christianity. It would, in good sooth, have been absurd to hope to have the morality of the people improved by the personal influence of such reckless adventurers.