NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14235, 4 December 1909, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

CHANGES IN JAPAN.

When the makers of modern Japan brought her into contact with Western civilisation, they exposed the whole body of her intellectual and moral conceptions to a solvent whose action is irresistible. It is doing, and it must go on doing, Its work. Symptoms of its operation which are marked and unmistakable are already manifest in many spheres. ' The changes must continue, and as they continue they must necessarily spread wider over ' the national life and permeate its inmost tissues more and more deeply. The growth and the diffusion of wealth are amongst the most palpable of these changes. They have already been very great, as the remarkable rescript issued last year by the Emperor himself clearly witnesses, and, doubtless, they will be greater. The formation of an entirely new middle class is one of the consequences which is following from them. The rise and expansion of this class may affect not merely the commerce and industry, but the politics and the ethics of the nation. The changes which Western intercourse brings cannot be confined .to the material order. It is pregnant with other influences, subtler, and more pervasive than wealth and the crude materialism, that wealth' fosters. They may work for good or evil. They cannot be shut out or sterilised. The I spiritual ideas and the spiritual life of the nation must infallibly undergo modification with the rest of its inherited conceptions. The rise in Japan of a movement for the regeneration of Buddhism on an ethical rather than on a doctrinal basis, and on an ethical basis largely imbued with the morality of the New Testament, is exceedingly ' suggestive. So, too, is ' the pronounced attraction which the moral side of Christianity possesses for many Japanese. The growth of these ; tendencies and ideas indicates that a void in the spiritual lifts of the higher classes already exists. It seems destined almost certainly to expand. >. • Can it be filled, and by. what means ? Great issues hang upon the answer, for,, b.e it what it will, it must react upon the beliefs and upon the morals of the whole world.

PROFESSOR LOMBROSO'S WORK.

The world owes something to- the late Professor Lombroso. Until he broke in upon the barren abstract discussion of crime and its causes with his daring paradoxes, there was a disposition to be lenient to the extent of weakness and folly. We heard much more of the faults'of the administrators of the criminal law than of the criminal. He was assumed to be generally the victim of circumstances, a naturally good man struggling unsuccessfully with adversity. Society had fashioned him in its prisons and its slums. He would probably have been much as those who condemn him had he enjoyed their chrnces in life. Not a little excellent legislation was passed under the influence of this generous assumption. But this reaction against the harsh policy of the past went too far. It was time for opinion to stiffen and harden; to recognise facts which Lombroso, with unwearied, if uncritical, industry had collected; to admit that there is a cfass of criminals whom it is folly to think of reforming. Criminals, said Lombroso and his disciples, are degenerates, and as such are not amenable to tho influences of reason or punishment. No , arguments or threats avail/where there are'organic defects, disease, mental or physical, deep-seated depravity of pessions Modern legislation does not entirely adopt this language. It comes, however, to much the same conclusion as Lombroso. The Act of 1908, with its powers to inflict sentences of detention on young offenders, its novel provisions for passing sentences of "preventive detention" on those who are "leading persistently a dishonest or criminal life," or are habitual offenders, is a striking recognition of some of the principles for which Lombroso contended, and to which few gave heed 'until he compiled, with remarkable industry and persistency, facts in support of them. Few have done more than he to put an end to a pleasing delusion which long obstructed sensible treatment of the criminal classes. Largely, though unconsciously, through his j teaching the practice as to punishments j has changed. Owing also very much to him, we have learned to discredit the plausible doctrine that education, in the j ordinary sense, and mere increase of knowledge will deter wrongdoing.