sights. The student finds that what he at first took without question for the product of home construction, in truth came originally from abroad. They were adopted, and then adapted, these delightful ways of doing things. Modification of foreign motif, modification always artistic, and at times delightfully ingenious, marks the extent of Japanese originality. Now absence of originality is but another term for absence of innate activity of mind. For the one is father to the other. But when energy to coruscate is lacking, action continues in the easier round of routine. Only in more evolved minds do ideas bud in profusion, and they do so just in proportion to the degree of development of the mind. So that a superior mind is not only ahead in the race, but is advancing at a proportionally rapid rate; a fact which offers small consolation to those who happen already to be behindhand.
A general incapacity for abstract ideas is another marked trait of the Japanese mind. This, joined to a limited reasoning power, has made would-be far-eastern science as funny as far-eastern art is fine. Before the nation went to Dame Europe's school, its criticism
