live under the same heaven.”  The tales of heroic Japan abound in stories of revenge.  Once when Confucius was asked about the doctrine of Lao-Tse that one should return good for evil, he replied, “With what then should one reward good?  The true doctrine is to return good for good, and evil with justice.”  This saying of Confucius has nullified for twenty-four hundred years that pearl of truth enunciated by Lao-Tse, and has caused it to remain an undiscovered diamond amid the rubbish of Taoism.  By this judgment Confucius sanctified the rough methods of justice adopted in a primitive order of society.  His dictum peculiarly harmonized with the militarism of Japan.  Being, then, a recognized duty for many hundred years, it would be strange indeed were not revengefulness to appear among the modern traits of the Japanese.

But the whole order of society has been transformed.  Revenge is now under the ban of the state, which has made itself responsible for the infliction of corporal punishment on individual transgressors.  As a result conspicuous manifestations of the revengeful spirit have disappeared, and, may we not rightly say, even the spirit itself?  The new order of society leaves no room for its ordinary activity; it furnishes legal methods of redress.  The rapid change in regard to this characteristic gives reason for thinking that if the industrial and social order could be suitably adjusted, and the conditions of individual thought and life regulated, this, and many other evil traits of human character, might become radically changed in a short time.  Intelligent Christian Socialism is based on this theory and seems to have no little support for its position.

Are Japanese cruel or humane?  The general impression of the casual tourist doubtless is that they are humane.  They are kind to children on the streets, to a marked degree; the jinrikisha runners turn out not only for men, women, and children, but even for dogs.  The patience, too, of the ordinary Japanese under trying circumstances is marked; they show amazing tolerance for one another’s failings and defects, and their mutual helpfulness in seasons of distress is often striking.  To one traveling through New Japan there is usually little that will strike the eye as cruel.

But the longer one lives in the country, the more is he impressed with certain aspects of life which seem to evince an essentially unsympathetic and inhumane disposition.  I well remember the shock I received when I discovered, not far from my home in Kumamoto, an insane man kept in a cage.  He was given only a slight amount of clothing, even though heavy frost fell each night.  Food was given him once or twice a day.  He was treated like a wild animal, not even being provided with bedding.  This is not an exceptional instance, as might, perhaps, at first be supposed.  The editor of the Japan Mail, who has lived in Japan many years, and knows the people well, says:  “Every foreigner traveling