rtunates on whom the pressures of both
currents are directed are often quite destroyed.

Comparison is often made between Japan and India. In both countries
enormous social changes are taking place; in both, Eastern and Western
civilizations are in contact and in conflict. The differences,
however, are even more striking than the likenesses. Most conspicuous
is the fact that whereas, in India, the changes in civilization are
due almost wholly to the force and rule of the conquering race, in
Japan these changes are spontaneous, attributable entirely to the
desire and initiative of the native rulers. This difference is
fundamental and vital. The evolution of society in India is to a large
degree compulsory; in a true sense it is an artificial evolution. In
Japan, on the other hand, evolution is natural. There has not been
the slightest physical compulsion laid on her from without. With two
rare exceptions, Japan has never heard the boom of foreign cannon
carrying destruction to her people. During these years of change,
there have been none but Japanese rulers, and such has been the case
throughout the entire period of Japanese history. Their native rulers
have introduced changes such as foreign rulers would hardly have
ventured upon. The adoption of the Chinese language, literature, and
religions from ten to twelve centuries ago, was not occasioned by a
military occupancy of Japanese soil by invaders from China. It was due
absolutely to the free choice of their versatile people, as free and
voluntary as was the adoption by Rome of Greek literature and
standards of learning. The modern choice of Western material
civilization no doubt had elements of fear as motive power. But
impulsion through a knowledge of conditions differs radically from
compulsion exercised by a foreign military occupancy. India
illustrates the latter; Japan, the former.

Japan and her people manifest amazing contrasts. Never, on the one
hand, has a nation been so free from foreign military occupancy
throughout a history covering more than fifteen centuries, and at the
same time, been so influenced by and even subject to foreign psychical
environment. What was the fact in ancient times is the fact to-day.
The dominance of China and India has been largely displaced by that of
Europe. Western literature, language, and science, and even customs,
are being welcomed by Japan, and are working their inevitable effects.
But it is all perfectly natural, perfe