"To the ordinary European trader it seems no doubt a strange thing that we should object to what he describes as the opening out of our national resources. Viewing everything, as he habitually does, from the standpoint of profit and loss, he conceives that if it can be shown that a certain course will lead to the increase of wealth, it follows that that is the course that ought to be adopted. The opening of China to his country and his trade he believes will have this result; and he concludes that it is our interest to welcome rather than to resist his enterprise. From his point of view he is justified; but his point of view is not ours. We are accustomed, before adopting any grave measures of policy, to estimate their effects, not merely on the sum total of our wealth, but (which we conceive to be a very different thing) on our national well-being. You, as always, are thinking of the means of living, we, of the quality of the life lived. And when you ask us, as you do in effect, to transform our whole society, to convert ourselves from a nation of agriculturists to a nation of traders and manufacturers, to sacrifice to an imaginary prosperity our political and economic independence, and to revolutionize, not only our industry, but our manners, morals, and institutions, we may be pardoned if we first take a critical look at the effects which have been produced among yourselves by the conditions you urge us to introduce in China." This statement is of peculiar interest as showing that with regard to European innovations China occupies a position diametrically opposed to that of Japan. Evidently China is not blind where European conditions are concerned. The Chinese do not ignore the material and technical advantages and achievements of Europe. They realize with tolerable clearness the superior material conditions which modern life offers. The only point upon which they are not clear is how far all these innovations help us to make life more tolerable, and how far they contribute to the inner satisfaction or happiness of the people. "I have learned that the most brilliant discoveries, the most fruitful applications of inventive genius, do not of themselves suffice for the well-being of society, and that an intelligence which is concentrated exclusively on the production of labour-saving machines, may easily work more harm for the dislocation of industry than it can accomplish good by the increase of wealth. For the increase of wealth--that is, of the means of comfort--is not to my mind necessarily good in itself; everything depends on the way in which the wealth is distributed and on its effect on the moral character of the nations. And it is from that point of view that I look with some dismay upon the prospect of the introduction of Western methods into China."