The material side of their civilisation will after a time conform to the European type, though, perhaps, to forms that are not the most progressive; and even such faiths as Buddhism and Islam may lose their hold on those who come most into contact with Europeans. But whether these peoples will produce any new types of thought or art under the stimulus of Europe, as the Teutons and Slavs did after they had been for centuries in contact with the relics of Greco-Roman culture, or whether they will be overborne by and merely imitate and reproduce what Europeans teach them--this is a question for conjecture only, since the data for predictions are wanting. It is a question of special interest as regards the Japanese, the one non-European race which, having an old civilisation of its own, highly developed on the artistic side, has shown an amazing aptitude for appropriating European institutions and ideas. Already a Japanese physiologist has taken high rank among men of science by being one of the discoverers of the bacillus of the Oriental plague. DOES HISTORY MAKE FOR PROGRESS? One of the questions which both the writers and the readers of a History of the World must frequently ask themselves is whether the course of history establishes a general law of progress. Some thinkers have gone so far as to say that this must be the moral of history regarded as a whole, and a few have even suggested that without the recognition of such a principle and of a sort of general guidance of human affairs towards this goal, history would be unintelligible, and the doings of mankind would seem little better than the sport of chance. [Sidenote: What is the Test of Progress?] [Sidenote: What Mankind has Achieved]