There is in many people a dislike of English, and where this exists the kind of thing that I'm going to say will seem irrelevant and unimportant. There is an idea that English, if allowed free play, will kill many of Japanese deeper emotions and traditions. This belief appears to me to be due to an entirely erroneous conception of the function of English. It is not the business of English to generate them, though it may be part of its function to discover ways of preventing such things as are an obstacle to well-being. To find ways of minimizing them is no doubt part of the function of English. But it is a mistake to suppose that in minimizing we shall at the same time diminish the strength of such things that English does not cncern
>>631 The man who is proficient in English is freer in his contemplation of the world and in the use of his energies to achieve external purposes than is the nationalist who is perpetually hampered by inward conflicts. Nothing is so dull as to be encased in self, nothing so exhilarating as to have attention and energy directed outwards.