The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1890-11-12
japanese Reform.
BY PEaCIvAL LOWELL.

Japanese Reform.
BY PEaoIvAL LOWELL.
For the last decades the career of
Japan has been startlin ely acrObot-
ic. Ever since 1868, when she made
her great evolutionary somersault
over the backs of six centuries,
from feudal state into the arena
of modern life, she has been turn
ing her whole social SYSTEM 0psy-
turvy, in her haste to be fully
abreast of the latter end of the
nineteenth century; and the rest of
the world has wondered at the feat
u fortunately for this really re-
markable performance, Dame Ma
ture is not addicted to jumps her
self, and objects to them in her off
spring; such lapse of continuity
forming no part of the maternsl
scheme of education. In her do
mestic curriculum progress of the
kind is inadmfssable.
Not simply is development nee
cessarily continuous, but different
lines of life can only be linked
while still relatively close. Nature
never joins what time hath set too
far asunder. We are witness to
this in everyday physical repro
duction. Extremes will not mate.
Symptoms of failure appear when
tire civilized weds with the savage.
The savagery, however, is not in
itself the bar. That it seems to be
80 is because, in most other cases of
racial intermarriage, the couple are
both of Aryan blood, and therefore
cousins of no very distant degree.
The real barrier consists, not in
dissimilarity Of descent. In other
words, not the want of development
of the only, but the difference in de-
velopment of the two, determines
the fruitlessness of their connec-
ton.
A well-known foreign physician
in Tokyo has found that among Eu-
rasians, those that is, half of Euro
pean, half of Asiatic blood, the al
most inevitable tendency is to the
; dying out ofthe family. In physN-
ue, the human gap between the op-
pOsite sides of our world is already
too wide to becrossed. Yet anatom-
ically the variance is trivial. A
slight difference in the setting OF
the eye, one or two other variations
} not more important, and you have
: the extent of the contrast. Psychi.
cally, the opposition is much more
marked; for it causes that strange
} inversion so striking to the one PEG
pie in the other. If then in body
where science can detect so trifline
divergence, Nature finds an i'm
J passable gulf what must her diff
Guilty be in mind! If intermarriagt
prove barren, will intercommunior
: of thought bear fruit?
, No such doubts, however, hav,
disturbed Japan's leading men
: Quite oblivious to a possible i'm
D possibility, they have foisted foreign
7 customs upon their country whole
! sale. The government has outrad
! icaled the radicals of any othe
Q land, and even the opposition ha
|, had Its breath so taken away b,
' the speed of the change as to hav
had none left with which to remon
r strate. The government indeed
}, has been a most remarkable expel
b ment in empires. A handful q
: men, educated in European mode
/, of thought, has revolutionized no
e simply the political, but the SC
i cial, the domestic, even the privat
J. customs of an entire community
y The only point more surprisin
It still has been the enthusiastic al
e ceptance of the same by the thinl
h ing classes.-November Atlantic.