ogress is the attainment of new ideas, whatever be their source.
Japan has not only taken up a great host of these, but in doing so she
has adopted a social structure to stimulate the continuous production
of new ideas, through the development of individuality. She is thus in
the true line of continuously progressive evolution. Imitating the
stronger nations, she has introduced into her system the life-giving
blood of free discussion, popular education, and universal individual
rights and liberty. In a word, she has begun to be an individualistic
nation. She has introduced a social order fitted to a wide development
of personality.

The importance of the second line of progress, the physical, would
seem to be too obvious to call for any detailed consideration. But so
much has been said by both graceful and able writers on Japan as to
the advantages she enjoys from her simple non-mechanical civilization,
and the mistake she is making in adopting the mechanical civilization
of the West, that it may not be amiss to dwell for a few moments upon
it. I wish to show that the second element of progress consists in the
_increasing use of mechanisms_.

The enthusiastic admirer of Japan hardly finds words wherewith
sufficiently to praise the simplicity of her pre-Meiji civilization.
No furniture brings confusion to the room; no machinery distresses the
ear with its groanings or the eye with its unsightliness. No factories
blacken the sky with smoke. No trains screeching through the towns and
cities disturb sleepers and frighten babies. The simple bed on the
floor, the straw sandal on the foot, wooden chopsticks in place of
knives and forks, the small variety of foods and of cooking utensils,
the simple, homespun cotton clothing, the fascinating homes, so small
and neat and clean--in truth all that pertains to Old Japan finds
favor in the eyes of the enthusiastic admirer from the Occident. One
such writer, in an elaborate paper intended to set forth the
superiority of the original Japanese to the Occidental civilization,
uses the following language: "Ability to live without furniture,
without impedimenta, with the least possible amount of neat clothing,
shows more than the advantage held by the Japanese race in the
struggle of life; it shows also the real character of some of the
weaknesses in our own civilization. It forces reflection upon the
useless multiplicity of our daily wants. We must have meat and bread
and butter; glass