persuade such a people that in other matters every man has a right to act according to his own convictions, and for his own advantage, independently of any group to which he may belong, the immediate result will not be fortunate,--because the sense of individual moral responsibility has not yet been sufficiently cultivated outside of the group-relation. The probable truth is that the strength of the government up to the present time has been chiefly due to the conservation of ancient methods, and to the survival of the ancient spirit of reverential submission. Later on, no doubt, great changes will have to be made; meanwhile, much must be bravely endured. Perhaps the future history of modern civilization will hold record of nothing more touching than the patient heroism of those myriads of Japanese patriots, content to accept, under legal [417] conditions of freedom, the official servitude of feudal days,--satisfied to give their talent, their strength, their utmost effort, their lives, for the simple privilege of obeying a government that still accepts all sacrifices in the feudal spirit--as a matter of course,--as a national duty. And as a national duty, indeed, the sacrifices are made. All know that Japan is in danger, between the terrible friendship of England and the terrible enmity of Russia,--that she is poor,--that the cost of maintaining her armaments is straining her resources,--that it is everybody's duty to be content with as little as possible. So the complaints are not many.... Nor has the simple obedience of the nation at large been less touching,--especially, perhaps, as regards the imperial order to acquire Western knowledge, to learn Western languages, to imitate Western ways. Only those who have lived in Japan during or before the early nineties are qualified to speak of the loyal eagerness that made self-destruction by over-study a common form of death,--the passionate obedience that impelled even children to ruin their health in the effort to master tasks too difficult for their little minds (tasks devised by well-meaning advisers with no knowledge of Far-Eastern psychology),--and the strange courage of persistence in periods of earthquake and conflagration, when boys and girls used the tiles of their ruined homes for school-slates, and bits of fallen plaster for pencils. What [418] tragedies I might relate even of the higher educational life of universities!--of fine brains giving way under pressure of work beyond the capacity of the average European student,--of triumphs won in the teeth of death,--of strange farewells from pupils in the time of the dreaded examinations, as when one said to me: "Sir, I am very much afraid that my paper is bad, because I came out of the hospital to make it--there is something the matter with my heart." (His diploma was placed in his hands scarcely an hour before he died.) ... And all this striving--striving not only against difficulties of study, but