not leave their homes in search of others that were better.  They were serfs, if not slaves, and the system did not tend to raise the standard of life or education, of manhood or womanhood among the people.  The happiness of the people in such times was due in part to their essential inhumanity of heart and lack of sympathy with suffering and sorrow.  Each individual bore his own sorrow and pain alone.  The community, as such, did not distress itself over individuals who suffered.  Sympathy, in its full meaning, was unknown in Old Japan.  The barbarous custom of casting out the leper from the home, to wander a lonely exile, living on the charity of strangers, is not unknown even to this day.  We are told that in past times the “people were governed by such strong aversion to the sight of sickness that travelers were often left to die by the roadside from thirst, hunger, or disease; and householders even went the length of thrusting out of doors and abandoning to utter destitution servants who suffered from chronic maladies.”  So universal was this heartlessness that the government at one time issued proclamations against the practices it allowed.  “Whenever an epidemic occurred the number of deaths was enormous.”  Seven men of the outcast, “the Eta,” class were authoritatively declared equal in value to one common man.  Beggars were technically called “hi-nin,” “not men.”

Those who descant on the happiness of Old Japan commit the great error of overlooking all these sad features of life, and of fixing their attention exclusively on the one feature of the childlike, not to say childish, lightness of heart of the common people.  Such writers are thus led to pronounce the past better than the present time.  They also overlook the profound happiness and widespread prosperity of the present era.  Trade, commerce, manufactures, travel, the freest of intercommunication, newspapers, and international relations, have brought into life a richness and a fullness that were then unknown.  But in addition, the people now enjoy a security of personal interests, a possession of personal rights and property, and a personal liberty, that make life far more worthy and profoundly enjoyable, even while they bring responsibilities and duties and not a few anxieties.  This explains the fact that no Japanese has expressed to me the slightest desire to abandon the present and return to the life and conditions of Old Japan.

Let me repeat, therefore, with all possible emphasis, that the problem of progress is not primarily one of increasing light-heartedness, pure and simple, nor yet a problem of racial unification or of political centralization; it is rather a problem of so developing the structure of society that the individual may have the fullest opportunity for development.

The measure of progress is not the degree of racial unification, of political centralization, or of unreflective happiness, but rather the degree and the extent of individual personality.  Racial unification, political centralization, and increasing happiness are in the attainment of progress, but they are not to be viewed as sufficient ends.  Personality, can alone be that end.  The wide development of personality, therefore, is at once the goal and the criterion of progress.