This is the problem that will engage our attention more or less directly throughout this work. We shall give our chief thought to the nature and development of Japanese racial characteristics, believing that this alone gives the light needed for the solution of the problem.[B] III THE PROBLEM OF PROGRESS What constitutes progress? And what is the true criterion for its measurement? In adopting Western methods of life and thought, is Japan advancing or receding? The simplicity of the life of the common people, their freedom from fashions that fetter the Occidental, their independence of furniture in their homes, their few wants and fewer necessities--these, when contrasted with the endless needs and demands of an Occidental, are accepted by some as evidences of a higher stage of civilization than prevails in the West. The hedonistic criterion of progress is the one most commonly adopted in considering the question as to whether Japan is the gainer or the loser by her rapid abandonment of old ways and ideas and by her equally rapid adoption of Western ones in their place. Yet this appeal to happiness seems to me a misleading because vague, if not altogether false, standard of progress. Those who use it insist that the people of Japan are losing their former happiness under the stress of new conditions. Now there can be no doubt that during the "Kyu-han jidai," the times before the coming in of Western waves of life, the farmers were a simple, unsophisticated people; living from month to month with little thought or anxiety. They may be said to have been happy. The samurai who lived wholly on the bounty of the daimyo led of course a tranquil life, at least so far as anxiety or toil for daily rice and fish was concerned. As the fathers had lived and fought and died, so did the sons. To a large extent the community had all things in common; for although the lord lived in relative luxury, yet in such small communities there never was the great difference between classes that we find in modern Europe and America. As a rule the people were fed, if there was food. The socialistic principle was practically universal. Especially was emphasis laid on kinship. As a result, save among the outcast classes, the extremes of poverty did not exist. Were we to rest our inquiries at this point, we might say that in truth the Japanese had attained the summit of progress; that nothing further could be asked. But pushing our way further, we find that the peace and quiet of the ordinary classes of society were accompanied by many undesirable features.