ivilization is not so much the quality of goodness
revealed, as its quantity. Between aborigines and highly advanced
people, there exists a wide gulf, but that gulf becomes perceptibly
narrower between the so-called semi-civilized and the civilized, much
narrower than the word "semi" indicates with the force of scientific
exactness. But behind all these arguments, there lays the most
fundamental condition of the adaptability, namely: that the people
should be desirous of establishing it. No other Asiatic nations beside
Japan have expressed their desire to this end, either by words or by
action, and therefore they are incapacitated.

This objection would be fatal, if we were advocating that the Asiatic
people ought to have constitutional government. But we have not been.
We have been arguing that since constitutional government has
irresistible attraction to those who can understand what it is, and
since it has already been established in Japan, the other Asiatic
nations will begin to desire it, notwithstanding their seeming
ignorance and conservatism; and because they are adapted for it in all
the respects but one, the want of desire to establish it, when that
desire is enkindled within their breasts, then a "great democratic
revolution," which De Tocqueville said was going on in Europe,[18] and
which is still going on there, will also go on in Asia. We may observe
in passing, that Sir Henry Maine's arguments against the
irresistibility of popular government[19] have no connection with our
position, being directed against the ultra-democratic tendency of
modern times which is beyond the scope of our present discussion.

[18] His Democracy in America, Vol. I., p. 2.

[19] His Popular Government, pp. 70-74.

But will this new institution of Japan possess permanency?
Constitutional government has shown in many cases the lack of
stability. In France and Spain especially it has been established and
overthrown again and again.[20] Can _Tei Koku Gi Kai_[21] prove itself
above such frailty and stand for ages a majestic monument of the
people capable of self-government? Or must it pass away in ignominy
and gloom through its own weakness, or of the constitution, or of the
people, or of all these combined? Hitherto we have been discussing the
extrinsic significance of constitutional government in Japan, but this
important question introduces us into the field of its intrinsic
excellence. To answer the question we mus