Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO
his fellow-countrymen with as much attention and
research as though he had been going to write a
book, instead of merely to propose a remedy. To
a man of his intensity and singleness, there is no
question but that this survey was melancholy in the
extreme. His dissatisfaction is proved by the eager-
ness with which he threw himself into the cause of
reform ; and what would have discouraged another
braced Yoshida for his task. As he professed the
theory of arms, it was firstly the defences of Japan
that occupied his mind. The external feebleness of
that country was then illustrated by the manners of
overriding barbarians, and the visits of big barbarian
war-ships : she was a country beleaguered. Thus
the patriotism of Yoshida took a form which may be
said to have defeated itself : he had it upon him to
keep out these all-powerful foreigners, whom it is
now one of his chief merits to have helped to in-
troduce ; but a man who follows his own virtuous
heart will be always found in the end to have been
fighting for the best. One thing leads naturally to
another in an awakened mind, and that with an up-
ward progress from effect to cause. The power and
knowledge of these foreigners were things insepar-
able ; by envying them their military strength,
Yoshida came to envy them their culture ; from
the desire to equal them in the first sprang his
desire to share with them in the second ; and thus
he is found treating in the same book of a new
scheme to strengthen the defences of Kioto and of
the establishment, in the same city, of a university
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