But this simple fact that 'God fulfills Himself in many ways,' as your Tennyson has it, so necessary to ensure freedom from national bigotry and conventional ignorance, so necessary too for a proper understanding of oneself as the cumulative product of a nation's history, has not always been kept in mind, even by those otherwise well-meaning authors, whose works have some charm as descriptive writing, but give only a superficial and often misleading account of the inner life of the nation. True, a great deal of excellent work has been achieved by a number of scholars of lasting merit, from Kaempfe's memorable work first published in its English translation as early as 1727, down to the admirable _Interpretation_ written last year by the late Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, in whose death Japan lost one of her most precious friends, possessing as he did the scholar's insight and the poet's pen, two heavenly gifts seldom found united in a single man. It is mainly through the remarkable labour of two learned bodies, the Asiatic Society of Japan, and the _Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens_, both with their headquarters in Tôkyô--in whose indefatigable researches the 'Japan Society' in this city has ably joined since 1892--that most valuable data have been constantly brought to light, furnishing for future students sure bases for wider generalizations. But owing to the numerous hindrances--some of which look almost insurmountable to the Western investigator--a fair synthetic interpretation of Japan as a nation, explaining all the important forces that underlie the psychic and physical phenomena, still remains to be written. The most formidable of the difficulties which meet a European or American student at the very threshold of his researches is the totally different construction of Japanese society, a difficulty which makes it impossible to understand properly any set of the phenomena belonging to it apart from the others which surround them. One could as well cut a single mesh from a net without prejudice to the neighbouring ones! The proper understanding of things Japanese therefore presupposes freedom from your conventional philosophy of life, and the power of viewing things through other people's eyes.