e end of it all will be I have, bearing the dangers
of prophecy well in mind, attempted to show in a final chapter. But I
may remark that nothing in regard to the forces at work in Japan of
recent years, and the outcome of the same so far gives me at any rate
more unmixed pleasure than the way in which the theorists have been
confounded, those men who cut and carve and label human beings,
whether individually or in the aggregate, as if they were mere blocks
of wood. The Oriental mind, we have been told, cannot do this;
Oriental prejudices and idiosyncrasies and modes of thought and
hereditary influences will not admit of that; the traditions of the
Far East, that mysterious thing, will prevent the other--we have been
told all this, I repeat, and told it _ad nauseam_. Japan as it is
to-day refutes these prophecies, these dogmatic pronouncements,
psychical and ethnological. The Japanese race, when regarded from what
I deem to be the only correct standpoint for forming a sound judgment
as to the position it holds among the races of the world, namely, in
respect of the size and convolution of the brain, occupies in my
opinion a high, a very high place. All other factors, often given such
undue prominence in forming an estimate as to the character of any
people I regard as mere accidentals. The story of Japan during the
last thirty or forty years affords ample proof of what I have said;
the position of the country to-day offers visible demonstration of it.
Japan has reached and will keep the position of a great Power, and the
Japanese that of a great people, just because of the preponderating
mental abilities of the population of the country, its capacity for
assimilation, its desire for knowledge, its pertinacity,
strenuousness, and aspirations to possess and acquire by the process
of selection the very best the world can give it.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE FUTURE OF JAPAN--PHYSICAL--MORAL--MENTAL

I know by experience, even if the history of the world had not
furnished many examples to prove it, that prophecy is risky. It is a
fascinating pastime inasmuch as it affords the imaginative faculties
full scope, but at the same time it is a mistake to let the
imagination run riot. I have no intention, in considering the future
of Japan, of depicting an Arcadia or a Utopia the outcome of one's
desire rather than of the knowledge that one possesses of the
possibilities of the country and the belief that in due course those
pos