taken the West five hundred years to traverse. To-day Japan is making an unparalleled swift transition from its own past under the sway of the spirit of science and reason. Steamships, railways, electric telegraphs and telephones, power presses, scores of other kinds of labor saving machines, and innumerable quantities of the products of free invention are here; an army and navy with the modern appliances of scientific engineering, equipment, discipline, and strategy, are here; modern astronomy, meteorology, chemistry, medicine, geology, botany, and the whole host of natural sciences are here; scientific education. extending from the kindergarten to the University is here; the philosophy of science, its rationalism, its utilitarianism, its many forms of naturalistic speculation are here, too. Moreover, the force of Japan's religious traditions has either grown very weak, or has wholly ceased over increasing numbers. The same intellectual restlessness which characterizes the Western peoples, the same eager desire to make constant progress from the gains of to-day to the possible gains of to-morrow are active here. The scientific mood is upon Japan as upon America and Europe; and under its power the traditional past is disappearing, while the people are impelled to enter the future as discoverers setting out over a land unknown, to find a new home and fortunes. No earnest and intelligent citizen of this Empire, or friend of the Japanese people can look upon these facts without solicitude. What will the forces, thus so suddenly and powerfully set in operation, bring forth? I cannot doubt, knowing what I do of the course of human history, that popular government, that widening international intercourse, will, in the long run, produce the highest prosperity and happiness. I cannot doubt that, in order to reach these ends, the most efficient means is found in a true knowledge and use of nature and its forces, and in a practical science of man. The greatest attainments mankind have made, have been made in these modern times of free, rational thought and natural, utilitarian science. These conclusions I cannot doubt. But at the same time I cannot doubt too, that these grand factors in human progress are accompanied by very grave responsibilities and by the most serious dangers; by dangers which, if they are not guarded against, can bring to ruin the fairest structures that free thought and science may rear. And I am persuaded that if there ever was a people, whose character and circumstances made caution, prudence, comprehensive and conservative intelligence necessary in using these tremendous forces of progress, it is the people of Japan. I have long been convinced that this judgment is well founded. So, when the invitation. came to me to speak at your annual meeting, my immediate impulse was to emphasize this judgment here and to add some thoughts concerning the special dangers and duties which the advance of your present era brings into view. It may appear obtrusive for one who is a comparative stranger to speak in this way. This is a topic which may be thought to be peculiarly your own. But I believe you will indulge me by reason of the strong personal interest I have in Japan; also on account of your intimate relation now to our common humanity in whose welfare we are all involved. Moreover, the culminating thought of my address has a universal as well as a local bearing. I assume that human nature is in all men essentially the same; that, with the same impulses and conditions, all men will practically think and act alike. I assume, too, that cause and effect are uniformly connected in mental as well as in physical relations. The light of what has happened in human society may be taken as a safe guidance to what will happen where the same forces are at work. The Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Greeks, the Jews, the Romans the French, the Germans, the English, the Puritans, all formed, or are forming, great States. Some of these peoples are now but names in history. They were human beings. Their privileges, their dangers, their duties, were much alike. Their fortunes, their fates are only clear signs of the rise or fall, the grandeur or ruin of all who follow in their paths and do their deeds. So then with the light of man's experience to show us our way, let us go farther on. What of Japan's present political transformation? Had I time I would show in relation to this question how every |