old Confucian schools with its temple to Confucius.  All the rest have fallen into ruins or have been used for other purposes, while the gold-covered statues of the once deified teacher have been sold to curio-dealers or for their bullion value.  In the worship of Confucius, Bushido almost became a religion, but it worshiped the teacher instead of the Creator, maintaining its agnosticism as to the Creator, as to “Heaven,” to the end, and thus lapsed from the path of religious evolution.

This brings us down to modern times—­into the seventies.  Already in the sixties Japan had discovered herself in a totally new environment.  She found that foreign nations had made great progress in every direction since she shut them out two hundred and fifty years before.  She discovered her helplessness, she discovered, too, that the social order of Western peoples was totally distinct from hers.  These discoveries served to break down all the remaining sanctions for her particular type of social order—­Confucianistic feudalism.  The whole nation was eager to know the political systems of the West.  So long as the Shinto ideal of nationalism was not interfered with, the nation was free to adopt any new social order.  Japan’s political and commercial intercourse being with England and America, the social order of the Anglo-Saxon had the greatest influence on the Japanese mind.  Japan accordingly has become predominantly Anglo-Saxon in its social ideas.  Much has been made of the fact that the new social order has come in so easily; that the people have gained rights without fighting for them; and this has been attributed to the peculiarity of Japanese human nature.  This is an error.  The real reason for the ease with which the individualistic Anglo-Saxon social order has been introduced has been the collapse of the sanctions for the Confucian order.  No one had any ground of duty on which to stand and fight.  The national mind was open to any newcomer that might have appeared.  I am referring, of course, to the thinking classes.  All the rest, accustomed to submissive obedience, never thought of any other course than to accept the will of superiors.

Furthermore, the new social order in one important respect fell in with and helped to re-establish the old Shinto ideal, that, namely, of nationalism.  In the treaty negotiations, the West would deal with no intermediaries, only with the responsible national head.  Western ideals, too, demanded a strong national unity.  In this respect, then, the foreign ideals and foreign social order were powerful influences in building up the new patriotism, in re-enforcing the old Shinto social sanctions.