a fanciful nature. The torpedo destroyers are
named "Dragon-fly," "Full Moon," "The Moon in the Cloud," "Seabeach,"
"Dawn of Day," "Clustering Clouds," "Break of Day," "Ripples,"
"Evening Mist," "Dragon's Lamp," "Falcon," "Magpie," "White-naped
Crane," and "White Hawk." Surely, it cannot be maintained that the
Japanese are utterly lacking in fancy.

Distinguishing between fancy as "the power of forming pleasing,
graceful, whimsical, or odd mental images, or of combining them with
little regard to rational processes of construction," and imagination,
in its more philosophical use, as "the act of constructive intellect
in grouping the materials of knowledge or thought into new, original,
and rational systems," we assert without fear of successful
contradiction, that the Japanese race is not without either of these
important mental faculties.

In addition to the preceding illustrations of visionary and fanciful
traits, let the reader reflect on the significance of the comic and of
caricature in art. Japanese _Netsuke_ (tiny carvings of exquisite
skill representing comical men, women, and children) are famous the
world over. Surely, the fancy is the most conspicuous mental
characteristic revealed in this branch of Japanese art. In Japanese
poetry "a vast number of conceits, more or less pretty," are to be
found, likewise manifesting the fancy of both the authors who wrote
and the people who were pleased with and preserved their writings.[AT]
The so-called "impersonal habit of the Japanese mind," with a
corresponding "lack of personification of abstract qualities,"
doubtless prevents Japanese literature from rising to the poetic
heights attained by Western nations. But this lack does not prove the
Japanese mind incapable of such flights. As describing the actual
characteristics of the literature of the past the assertion of "a lack
of imaginative power" is doubtless fairly correct. But the inherent
nature of the Japanese mind cannot be inferred from the deficiencies
of its past literature, without first examining the relation between
its characteristic features and the nature of the social order and the
social inheritance.

Are the Japanese conspicuously deficient in imagination, in the sense
of the definition given above? The constructive imagination is the
creator of civilization. Not only art and literature, but, as already
noted, science, philosophy, politics, and even the practical arts and
prosaic farming are impos