informed even as to ordinary affairs, how
much less do they grasp the core of the important problems and complex
needs of the time.

It is therefore urgent that beneficial articles and books be written,
clearly and definitely establishing what the present-day requirements of
the people are, and what will conduce to the happiness and advancement of
society. These should be published and spread throughout the nation, so
that at least the leaders among the people should become, to some degree,
awakened, and arise to exert themselves along those lines which will lead
to their abiding honor. The publication of high thoughts is the dynamic
power in the arteries of life; it is the very soul of the world. Thoughts
are a boundless sea, and the effects and varying conditions of existence
are as the separate forms and individual limits of the waves; not until
the sea boils up will the waves rise and scatter their pearls of knowledge
on the shore of life.

Thou, Brother, art thy thought alone,
The rest is only thew and bone.(73)

Public opinion must be directed toward whatever is worthy of this day, and
this is impossible except through the use of adequate arguments and the
adducing of clear, comprehensive and conclusive proofs. For the helpless
masses know nothing of the world, and while there is no doubt that they
seek and long for their own happiness, yet ignorance like a heavy veil
shuts them away from it.

Observe to what a degree the lack of education will weaken and degrade a
people. Today [1875] from the standpoint of population the greatest nation
in the world is China, which has something over four hundred million
inhabitants. On this account, its government should be the most
distinguished on earth, its people the most acclaimed. And yet on the
contrary, because of its lack of education in cultural and material
civilization, it is the feeblest and the most helpless of all weak
nations. Not long ago, a small contingent of English and French troops
went to war with China and defeated that country so decisively that they
took over its capital Peking. Had the Chinese government and people been
abreast of the advanced sciences of the day, had they been skilled in the
arts of civilization, then if all the nations on earth had marched against
them the attack would still have failed, and the attackers would have
returned defeated whence they had come.

Stranger even than this episode is the fact that the government of Japan