zing ability whatever, their progress in
civilization being entirely due to their remarkable power of clever
imitation. Mr. W.G. Aston, in ascribing the characteristic features of
Japanese literature to the fundamental nature of the race, says they
are "hardly capable of high intellectual achievement."[AL]

While we may admit that the Japanese do not seem to have at present
the same power of scientific generalization as Occidentals, we
naturally ask ourselves whether the difference is due to natal
deficiency, or whether it may not be due to difference in early
training. We must not forget that the youth who come under the
observation of foreign teachers in Japanese schools are already
products of the Japanese system of education, home and school, and
necessarily are as defective as it is.

In a previous chapter a few instances of recent invention and
important scientific discovery were given.

These could not have been made without genuine powers of analysis and
generalization. We need not linger to elaborate this point.

Another set of facts throwing light on our problem is the success of
so many Japanese students, at home and in foreign lands, in mastering
modern thought. Great numbers have come back from Europe and America
with diplomas and titles; not a few have taken high rank in their
classes. The Japanese student abroad is usually a hard worker, like
his brother at home. I doubt if any students in the new or the old
world study more hours in a year than do these of Japan. It has often
amazed me to learn how much they are required to do. This is one fair
sign of intellectuality. The ease too with which young Japan, educated
in Occidental schools and introduced to Occidental systems of thought,
acquires abstruse speculations, searching analyses, and generalized
abstractions proves conclusively Japanese possession of the higher
mental faculties, in spite of the long survival in their civilization
of primitive puerility and superstitions and the lack of science,
properly so called.

Japanese youths, furthermore, have a fluency in public speech
decidedly above anything I have met with in the United States. Young
men of eighteen or twenty years of age deliver long discourses on
religion or history or politics, with an apparent ease that their
uncouth appearance would not lead one to expect. In the little school
of less than 150 boys in Kumamoto there were more individuals who
could talk intelligibly and forcefull