them likely future participants in Japan's modernization. Vissering, a member of La Vertu Lodge No, 7, Leyden introduced them to Freemasonry, of which they became the first Japanese adherents on October 20, 1864. Meiji philosopher Nishi returned to Japan in 1865, and was an active participant in the Meiji Restoration. He promoted contact with the West and Western intellectualism because he feared that in the long run, a domestic resistance to modernization and change in relation to contact with the West would be more destructive to Japan than any plausible repercussions of contact with the West. While abroad, Nishi became enthralled with Western philosophy and discerned that this intellectual pursuit subsisted at the foundation of Western civilization, and thus upon his return, he aimed to spread the Western Philosophy he came into contact with in order to help bridge the intellectual gap between the East and the West. Nishi brought back to Japan the philosophies of positivism, utilitarianism and empiricism, which he transmitted through his writing, lectures and participation in Mori Arinori's Meirokusha, and contributed numerous articles to its journal. Through Nishi’s transmissions, positivism was able to thrive in Meiji Japan because it gave the Japanese people a chance for stabilization and understanding in a society and culture that was undergoing rapid revolutionary change. To Nishi, positivism was the Western counterpart to Eastern practical studies (jitsugaku), with an emphasis on a hierarchy of knowledge similar to that of Confucianism. Nishi’s translations of utilitarianism were also taken to well during the restoration period because utilitarianism promotes the social over the individual, which is a concept that is easily reconcilable with a Confucian-trained mind in Meiji Japan. Utilitarianism also assisted Japanese modernization because Nishi and others have applied it to the justification of an industrial and commercial economy. As for empiricism, Nishi and the rest of the Yogakusha intellectuals became leading figures in the Meiji Enlightenment (bummei kaika, i.e. "civilization and enlightenment" ), in which they promoted empiricism and practical studies instead of abstract reasoning in order for each person to attain an understanding of truth. In 1868, Nishi translated and published "International Law". He also published an encyclopedia, The Hyakugaku Renkan, patterned after the French encyclopedia of Auguste Comte, while promoting the teachings of John Stuart Mill. Nishi’s encyclopedia essentially classified and categorized the intellectual realm of Western civilization, including topics such as literature, natural sciences, mathematics, theology, and politics. One