Page:Japan - A Lecture.djvu/21

Rh civilisation as her own. Her social ideals are already showing signs of defeat at the hands of politics, and her modern tendency seems to incline towards political gambling—in which the players stake their souls to win their game. I can see her motto, borrowed from science, "Survival of the Fittest," writ large at the entrance of her present-day history,—the motto whose meaning is, "Help yourself, and never heed what it costs to others;" the motto of the blind man, who only believes in what he can touch, because he cannot see. But those who can see, know that men are so closely knit, that when you strike others the blow comes back to yourself. The moral law, which is the greatest discovery of man, is the discovery of this wonderful truth, that man becomes all the truer, the more he realises himself in others. This truth has not only a subjective value, but is manifested in every department of our life. And nations, who sedulously cultivate moral blindness as the cult of patriotism, will end their existence in a sudden and violent death. In past ages we had foreign invasions, but they never touched the souls of the people deeply; for the people, as a body, never participated in these games. They were merely the outcome of individual ambitions. Theiefore the ideals, whose seats were in the hearts of the people, would not undergo any serious change owing to the policies adopted by the kings or generals. But now, where the spirit of the