To-day there is visible a tendency to hardening,--a danger of
changes leading to the integration of just such an officialism as
that which has proved the curse and the weakness of China. The
moral results of the new education have not been worthy of the
material results. The charge of want of "individuality," in the
accepted sense of pure selfishness, will scarcely be made against
the Japanese of the next century. Even the compositions of
students already reflect the new conception of intellectual
strength only as a weapon of offense, and the new sentiment of
aggressive egotism. "Impermanency," writes one, with a fading
memory of Buddhism in his mind, "is the nature of our life. We
see often persons who were rich yesterday, and are poor to-day.
This is the result of human competition, according to the law of
evolution. We are exposed to that competition. We must fight each
other, even if we are not inclined to do so. With what sword
shall we fight? With the sword of knowledge, forged by
education."

Well, there are two forms of the cultivation of Self. One leads
to the exceptional development of the qualities which are noble,
and the other signifies something about which the less said the
better. But it is not the former which the New Japan is now
beginning to study. I confess to being one of those who believe
that the human heart, even in the history of a race, may be worth
infinitely more than the human intellect, and that it will sooner
or later prove itself infinitely better able to answer all the
cruel enigmas of the Sphinx of Life. I still believe that the old
Japanese were nearer to the solution of those enigmas than are
we, just because they recognized moral beauty as greater than