discussions in the public press over the question of introducing foreign capital into Japan, one contributor to the Far East remarks that “It has been treated more from a theoretical than from a practical standpoint....  This seems to me to arise from a peculiar trait of Japanese mind which is prone to dwell solely on the theoretical side until the march of events compels a sudden leap toward the practical.”  This visionary faculty of the Japanese is especially conspicuous in the daily press.  Editorials on foreign affairs and on the relations of Japan to the world are full of it.

I venture to jot down a few illustrations of impractical idealism out of my personal knowledge.  An evangelist in the employ of the Kumamoto station exemplified this visionary trait in a marked degree.  Nervous in the extreme, he was constantly having new ideas.  For some reason his attention was turned to the subject of opium and the evils China was suffering from the drug, forced on her by England.  Forthwith he came to me for books on the subject; he wished to become fully informed, and then he proposed to go to China and preach on the subject.  For a few weeks he was full of his enterprise.  It seemed to him that if he were only allowed the opportunity he could convince the Chinese of their error, and the English of their crime.  One of his plans was to go to England and expostulate with them on their un-Christian dealings with China.  A few weeks later his attention was turned to the wrongs inflicted on the poor on account of their ignorance about law and their inability to get legal assistance.  This idea held him longer than the previous.

He desired to study law and become a public pleader in order to defend the poor against unjust men of wealth.  In his theological ideas he was likewise extreme and changeable; swinging from positive and most emphatic belief to extreme doubt, and later back again.  In his periods of triumphant faith it seemed to him that he could teach the world; and his expositions of truth were extremely interesting.  He proposed to formulate a new theology that would dissolve forever the difficulties of the old theology.  In his doubts, too, he was no less interesting and assertive.  His hold on practical matters was exceedingly slender.  His salary, though considerably larger than that of most of the evangelists, was never sufficient.  He would spend lavishly at the beginning of the month so long as he had the money, and then would pinch himself or else fall into debt.

Mr. ——­, the head of the Kumamoto Boys’ School during the period of its fierce struggles and final collapse, whom I have already referred to as the Hero-Principal,[AS] is another example of this impractical high-strung visionariness.  No sooner had he reached Kumamoto, than there opened before our enchanted eyes the vision of this little insignificant school blooming out into a great university.  True, there had been some of this bombast before his