450 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VII., No. 172 



question. The author thinks the times are out 

 of joint ; and he is grieved that so many men 

 have difficulty in earning a living. "The be- 

 nevolent heart," he says, " is tortured by the 

 cruel deliberation of natural selection, with its 

 inexorable logic.*' "Shall thousands of young 

 men walk the streets of our cities with then high 

 commencement - day hopes ever sinking, till de- 

 spair and gnawing hunger throw over every noble 

 aspiration, and drive them to lives of infamy or 

 death by suicide ? " The conclusion is, that, if 

 the young were taught the methods of industry 

 at school, they would afterwards have no trouble 

 in earning their living. We expected, therefore, 

 to find the author advocating the teaching of 

 mechanical trades in the common schools, as 

 many others have done. As a matter of fact, he 

 doesn't advocate industrial training at all : he 

 only advises that the methods of the various 

 industries should be described to the students, 

 just as objects in natural history are described, 

 but without any manual practice by the students 

 themselves. How this is to help them in earning 

 a living, we are unable to see ; but it is the sole 

 outcome of Mr. Dinwiddie's pamphlet. 



THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT IN 

 JAPAN. 



Everybody in America who knows at all that 

 there is such a country as Japan in the far east 

 ought to be aware by this time that great social 

 changes have for a past decade or two been going 

 on among us. And numerous books and articles 

 on Japan which have appeared within recent 

 years in America, ought to have made tolerably 

 clear of what nature these changes are. Thought- 

 ful persons must often have wondered from afar 

 whether these reforms are permanent, whether 

 the spirit of progress does not lag sometimes, 

 whether the people who seem to be rushing on 

 with a headlong pace do not at times look back 

 with longing on their past. If such persons had 

 taken the trouble to look into the matter three or 

 four years ago, they would have discovered that 

 their surmises were correct. At that time we 

 seemed to have turned round suddenly in the path 

 which we bad been so eagerly pursuing. People 

 had started with the idea that all things European 

 were good, and all things Japanese were bad. 

 As they went on trying one sweeping change 

 after another, they began to discover naturally 

 that there were many blots in the European 

 form of civilization, especially as imported into 

 oriental countries, and that many things Japanese 



were not bad at all, but excellent, and even sur- 

 passed then* European counterparts. This dis- 

 covery, helped also, to some extent, by compli- 

 ments, which foreign visitors are ever willing to 

 pour on us, carried the people's feeling to the op- 

 posite extreme. They said to themselves, " We 

 are not so very bad, after all. Why should we 

 change? Let us have back our own familiar 

 ways and things." The revival of old things be- 

 came the order of the day. Chinese ethics began 

 to be studied again with fervor, and the doctrines 

 of Confucius and Mencius reigned supreme once 

 more in the moral world. There was a revival of 

 old Japanese literature and traditions. Women 

 were to be brought up in the old-fashioned strait 

 path : they were not to be allowed to catch hold 

 of any new-fangled European ideas. Utai (a 

 peculiar kind of singing) was heard again on all 

 sides, and brought back old associations. Teach- 

 ers of cha no yu (the art of making tea, including 

 all the formalities attending its drinking, etc.) 

 were in requirement on every hand, while masters 

 of the Ogasawara school of etiquette bustled along 

 with smiling countenances. The fashion was to give 

 banquets in the old Japanese style, and restaurants 

 d la europienne felt it to be very hard times. 

 Young men were seen on the street, carrying 

 about fencing-apparatus, — a sight not seen since 

 the old feudal days. Schools of jit jitsu (a kind 

 of wrestling) sprang up into existence by dozens. 

 Various weapons of the saumrai which had been 

 hung up in dark corners, again saw the light, and 

 each claimed its own votaries. In short, all re- 

 forms seemed to be at an end for the present. 



It must not be supposed, however, that all these 

 carried us very far back. The backbone of old 

 Japan — feudalism — had been shattered beyond 

 all hopes of recovery ; and, without that, things 

 could not be made to work as in former days, 

 however much minor matters might be patched 

 up. Neither did people care to go back quite so 

 far. Those who looked beneath the surface could 

 easily see that this period of reaction could olfer 

 but a temporary check in the way of reforms, 

 being comparable simply to the rest-stages ob- 

 servable during earlier developmental phases of 

 many an animal. In fact, it proved to be of a 

 very short duration. And who shall regret that 

 there was just at that time partial retracing of 

 the path we had been following, since it will 

 prove to be the means of preserving many harm- 

 less arts and accomplishments peculiar to Japan, 

 which might otherwise have been lost forever ? 



At the present time we may be said to be fairly 

 in the midst of the second period of activity. We 

 seem to be just as eager as ever to pursue the 

 course of reforms ; perhaps a little more so, for 



