Gabriel Aubaret came to the China coast as a Lieutenant in the French Marine. A thorough student, he soon mastered Chinese, as he later did some of the languages of Indo-China. His career in Annam and Cochin China has been related in a previous number of this Quarterly. His work there showed him to be of a deeply sympathetic nature, and he was remembered chiefly for his interest in the native peoples. He was said to be deeply religious, with a tendency to mysticism, and seems to have had the courage, stubborness, and narrowness of view that often accompanies deep belief.

The future Japanese standard of living will depend largely on that country's industries and their maintenance. In turn, those industries must depend on their mainspring, energy. And finally, since coal, oil, and electricity provide this power and are to a certain extent interchangeable, and since Japan lacks oil and coal, she must depend for energy on electricity developed chiefly from water power.

Electricity in Japan attained late but thorough popularization. Today more than 90 per cent of Japanese homes are wired for electric lights, and in 1937, just before the China incident, electric lighting was probably more prevalent in Japan than any place else in the world. Despite these impressive statements, however, most Japanese homes are but dimly lit, due to the use of only a few light bulbs of low wattage. In 1941 the average number of bulbs per family was 4.2.

In our approach to the household religion of the Chinese people, we found it characterized in two essential particulars; it was integrated with the felt life needs of a village-dwelling agricultural folk, and it found expression occasionally in temple worship but more frequently in home ceremonials. Realizing that the historico-genetic study of any religion seeks the point of view of the worshiper himself, we set out to find, if possible, the answer to this insistent question: What are the benefits which the ordinary householder wishes to obtain for himself and his family in his religious practices? We felt, moreover, that the answer should come only from first-hand sources.

The following observations are based upon eleven and a half years of active participation in the building of the Oriental Library, now some 16,000 volumes, at Claremont. This activity was preceded by ten years of miscellaneous collecting and of discussion with faculty members and friends of the institution. The proverb about hindsight applies: the principles which guided us can be stated much easier now than when we began.