One thing worthy of notice is the fact that, notwithstanding the most convincing structural similarity that exists between these affiliated languages, they contain, comparatively speaking, few words in common, even among the numerals and personal pronouns, which have played such an important part in Indo-European philology. We must still wait a long time before a better knowledge of linguistic affinity reveals such decisive links of connection as will enable us to trace our Japanese home on the continent. Let us now consider what were the effects of the continental civilisation on the mental development of the Japanese within their insular home. Before entering into details about the various continental doctrines implanted in our country from China and India, it may be well to tell you something of the mental attitude of the Japanese in facing a new form of culture, in many senses far superior to their own. Nothing definite can perhaps be said about it; but when we grope along the main cord of historical phenomena we think we find that the Japanese as a whole are not a people with much aptitude for deep metaphysical ways of thinking. They are not of the calibre from which you expect a Kant or a Schopenhauer. Warlike by nature more than anything else, they have been known from the very beginning to have had the soldier-like simplicity and the easy contentment of men of action--qualities which the practical nature of Confucian ethics had ample chance to develop. The abstruse conceptions of Chinese or Indian origin have been received into the Japanese mind just as they were preached, and usually we have not troubled ourselves to think them out again; but in accordance with our peculiarly quick habit of perceiving the inner meaning of things, we have generalised them straight away and turned them immediately into so many working principles. There are any number of instances of slight hints given by some people on the continent and worked out to suit our own purposes into maxims of immediate and practical value. Ideals in their original home are ideals no longer in our island home. They are interpreted into so many realities with a direct bearing on our daily life. We have been and are, even to this day, always in need of some new hints and suggestions to work up into so many dynamic forces for practical use. Upon Europe and America the full power of our mental searchlight is now playing, in quest of those new ideas for future development for which we have been accustomed to draw mainly on China and India. Even such a commonplace thing as the drinking of a cup of tea becomes in our hands something more: it becomes a training in stoic serenity, in the capacity of smiling at life's troubles and disturbances. Some day you might learn from us a new philosophy based on the use of motor cars and telephones as applied to life and conduct!