The illustration from the Orient will not serve its purpose. We by no means admit that Japan does yet "take a front rank among the strong and intellectual nations of the world". One swallow does not make it spring. We are used to parallels between Sophocles and Ibsen. A Harvard junior declared Demosthenes to be the Edward Everett of Greece. But in any case it is not true that "they have made a sudden change". It was only gross ignorance that would have called them "hopelessly submerged half a century ago". They were then, even as they are now and as they were hundreds of years before, an artistic, ingenious, enterprising people, with a well-developed culture--language, literature, religion, social and civic and military life.[21] Contact with Western civilization has indeed aroused them and spurred their ambition, and turned their ancient powers into modern channels; but we can by no means say it has really augmented those powers or begotten any new ones. It is far from clear that this contact will prove ultimately beneficial. The Oriental grain is not improved to every eye by a cheap veneering of Occidental science and commercialism. We have read of a boy who was gilded from head to foot, to represent an angel at a church festival. The experiment was eminently successful: it turned him not only into an apparent angel, but also into a real one. A similar result may be anticipated as the ultimate issue of all attempts, however well-meant, to engraft alien civilization upon the really backward races of mankind. They will finally be civilized off the face of the earth, or at least from all regions habitable and healthful for the civilizing race. [21] Day teaches day. Until very recently our meagre information touching Japanese brain weight did not extend beyond the 130 examples reported by Doenitz (1874), Taguchi (1881), Suzuki (1892), of which the average was about 1,350 grams. Now, however, in the _Medical Journal_, Tokio, XXII, Nos. 1, 2, 8, 1903, and in_ Neurologia_, I, No. 5, 1903, Prof. K. Taguchi publishes measurements of 597 subjects; 421 males, 176 females. Of these, 374 adult males yielded an average of 1,367 grams, between the extremes 1,063 and 1,790; 150 adult females, an average of 1,214 grams, ranging from 961 to 1,432. Per centimetre of stature the brain weight of the Japanese is almost exactly the same as that of the Germans (Bischoff, Marchand), Russians (Giltscnenko), Czechs (Matiegka), of the same height. "To recapitulate, the brain of the Japanese grows more slowly during infancy and early youth than it does in the European. In the adult the brain-weight compares favorably with that of Europeans of similar stature, and it may be shown to be superior in this respect to other races of the same general stature." (E. A. Spitzka in _Science_, Sept. 18, 1903, p. 371-373).