iness and widespread prosperity of the
present era. Trade, commerce, manufactures, travel, the freest of
intercommunication, newspapers, and international relations, have
brought into life a richness and a fullness that were then unknown.
But in addition, the people now enjoy a security of personal
interests, a possession of personal rights and property, and a
personal liberty, that make life far more worthy and profoundly
enjoyable, even while they bring responsibilities and duties and not a
few anxieties. This explains the fact that no Japanese has expressed
to me the slightest desire to abandon the present and return to the
life and conditions of Old Japan.

Let me repeat, therefore, with all possible emphasis, that the problem
of progress is not primarily one of increasing light-heartedness, pure
and simple, nor yet a problem of racial unification or of political
centralization; it is rather a problem of so developing the structure
of society that the individual may have the fullest opportunity for
development.

The measure of progress is not the degree of racial unification, of
political centralization, or of unreflective happiness, but rather the
degree and the extent of individual personality. Racial unification,
political centralization, and increasing happiness are in the
attainment of progress, but they are not to be viewed as sufficient
ends. Personality, can alone be that end. The wide development of
personality, therefore, is at once the goal and the criterion of
progress.

IV

THE METHOD OF PROGRESS

Progress as an ideal is quite modern in its origin. For although the
ancients were progressing, they did it unconsciously, blindly,
stumbling on it by chance, forced to it, as we have seen, by the
struggle for existence. True of the ancient civilizations of Europe
and Western Asia and Africa, this is emphatically true of the Orient.
Here, so far from seeking to progress, the avowed aim has been not to
progress; the set purpose has been to do as the fathers did; to follow
their example even in customs and rites whose meaning has been lost in
the obscurity of the past. This blind adherence was the boast of those
who called themselves religious. They strove to fulfill their duties
to their ancestors.

Under such conditions how was progress possible? And how has it come
to pass that, ruled by this ideal until less than fifty years ago,
Japan is now facing quite the other way? The passion of the na