national unity, and the direct responsibility and
relation of each individual to the nation without any mediating group.
These rights and liberties are secured to the individual by a
constitution and by laws enacted by representative legislatures.
Government by discussion has been fairly inaugurated.

During these years of change the effort has been to leave the old
social order as undisturbed as possible. For example, it was hoped
that the reorganization of the military and naval forces of the Empire
would be sufficient without disturbing the feudal order and without
abolishing the feudal states. But this was soon found ineffectual. For
a time it was likewise thought that the adoption of Western methods of
government might be made without disturbing the old religious ideas
and without removing the edicts against Christianity. But experience
soon showed that the old civilization was a unit. No part could be
vitally modified without affecting the whole structure. Having knocked
over one block in the long row that made up their feudal social order,
it was found that each successive block was touched and fell, until
nothing was left standing as before. It was found also that the old
ideas of education, of travel, of jurisprudence, of torture and
punishment, of social ranks, of the relation of the individual to the
state, of the state to the family, and of religion to the family, were
more or less defective and unsuited to the new civilization. Before
this new movement all obstructive ideas, however, sanctioned by
antiquity, have had to give way. The Japanese of to-day look, as it
were, upon a new earth and a new heaven. Those of forty years ago
would be amazed, not only at the enormous changes in the externals,
life and government, but also at the transformation which has
overtaken every element of the older civilization. Putting it rather
strongly, it is now not the son who obeys the father, but the father
the son. The rulers no longer command the people, but the people
command the rulers. The people do not now toil to support the state;
but the state toils to protect the people.

Whether the incoming of these new ideas and practices be thought to
constitute progress or not will depend on one's view of the aim of
life. If this be as maintained in the previous chapter, then surely
the transformation of Japan must be counted progress. That, however,
to which I call attention is the fact that the essential requisite of
pr