But the point on which I wish to lay special emphasis is that the prime element of the form in which the deliverance came was through the acquisition of numerous new ideas.  These were presented by persons who thoroughly believed in them and who admittedly had a power not possessed by the Japanese themselves.  Though unable to originate these ideas, the Japanese yet proved themselves capable of understanding and appreciating them—­in a measure at least.  They were at first attracted to that which related chiefly to the externals of civilization, to that which would contribute immediately to the complete political centralization of the nation.  With great rapidity they adopted Western ideas about warfare and weapons.  They sent their young men abroad to study the civilization of the foreign nations.  At great expense they also employed many foreigners to teach them in their own land the things they wished to learn.  Thus have the Japanese mastered so rapidly the details of those ideas which, less than fifty years ago, were not only strange but odious to them.

Under their influence, the conditions which history shows to be the most conducive to the continuous growth of civilization have been definitely accepted and adopted by the people, namely, popular rights, the liberty of individuals to differ from the past so far as this does not interfere with national unity, and the direct responsibility and relation of each individual to the nation without any mediating group.  These rights and liberties are secured to the individual by a constitution and by laws enacted by representative legislatures.  Government by discussion has been fairly inaugurated.

During these years of change the effort has been to leave the old social order as undisturbed as possible.  For example, it was hoped that the reorganization of the military and naval forces of the Empire would be sufficient without disturbing the feudal order and without abolishing the feudal states.  But this was soon found ineffectual.  For a time it was likewise thought that the adoption of Western methods of government might be made without disturbing the old religious ideas and without removing the edicts against Christianity.  But experience soon showed that the old civilization was a unit.  No part could be vitally modified without affecting the whole structure.  Having knocked over one block in the long row that made up their feudal social order, it was found that each successive block was touched and fell, until nothing was left standing as before.  It was found also that the old ideas of education, of travel, of jurisprudence, of torture and punishment, of social ranks, of the relation of the individual to the state, of the state to the family, and of religion to the family, were more or less defective and unsuited to the new civilization.  Before this new movement all obstructive ideas, however, sanctioned by antiquity, have had to give way.  The Japanese of to-day look,