[450] 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 [451] 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.