Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/112

 written about this curious product of the era. His methods perplex foreign observers, who, finding no parallel in any Western society, regard him as a confirmation of the common suspicion that the moral constitution of the Japanese is a thing apart. Yet, in one sense, the evolution of the sōshi might have been foreseen by any close observer of the course of events in modern Japan, and was, in fact, foreseen by several. Education disproportionate to the opportunities for its use, a creed that had survived the circumstances of its origin, and pride of caste outliving the distinctions that once justified it,—these are the parents of the sōshi. When the first application of Western standards taught the Japanese nation its glaring deficiencies, the rising generation crowded the portals of the new school of learning, and in acquiring the novelties of foreign sciences, acquired also, as they supposed, a title to public consideration and public employment. But since the State could not recognise more than a fraction of such titles, and since, further, many of these eager youths found their strength insufficient to complete the new studies, there gradually came into existence a class of men equipped either with a grievance against the time or with a sense of failure, deterred by pride of birth from descending to toil in the ranks of "commoners," and still cherishing the old Confucian belief in the divine mandate of every private individual to redress public wrong. To men cherishing such