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Torquenado Directory 08
Page 09
The first care of the male stickleback, when he has acquired his courting suit, is to build a suitable home for his future wives and children. So he picks up stems of grass and water-weeds with his mouth, and weaves them deftly into a compact nest as perfect as a bird's, though some what different in shape and pattern, it rather resembles a barrel, open at both ends, as though the bottom were knocked out: this form is rendered necessary because the eggs, when laid, have to be constantly aerated by passing a current of water through the nest as I shall describe hereafter. No. 1 shows us such a nest when completed, with the female stickleback loitering about undecided as to whether or not she shall plunge and enter it. You will observe that the fabric is woven round a fixed support of some waving water-weeds; but the cunning little architect does not trust in this matter to his textile skill alone; he cements the straws and other materials together with a gummy mortar of mucous threads secreted for the purpose by his internal organs.
Whether the incoming of these new ideas and practices be thought to constitute progress or not will depend on one's view of the aim of life. If this be as maintained in the previous chapter, then surely the transformation of Japan must be counted progress. That, however, to which I call attention is the fact that the essential requisite of progress is the attainment of new ideas, whatever be their source. Japan has not only taken up a great host of these, but in doing so she has adopted a social structure to stimulate the continuous production of new ideas, through the development of individuality. She is thus in the true line of continuously progressive evolution. Imitating the stronger nations, she has introduced into her system the life-giving blood of free discussion, popular education, and universal individual rights and liberty. In a word, she has begun to be an individualistic nation. She has introduced a social order fitted to a wide development of personality.
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