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Our person was regarded, first of all, as the most precious legacy left by our fathers, wherein dwelt in its most holy of holies a divine presence, to be dedicated to the service of god, parent, or master—that is to say, to the exercise of what Mr. Reade, the author of the ‘Martyrdom of Man,’ calls the reverential virtues. Our body is an instrument to be used for an end higher than its tenant’s interest. It was treated as something lent us for the time being to clothe our spirit with. Hygienic laws were followed, not so much because their observance was attended with pleasant results, but because our health was a source of pleasure to our parents, and because it could be useful in serving our master. It was a usual thing for one dying in youth of sickness or suicide to apologize to his sorrowing parents for his premature departure in terms something like these: ‘Forgive me that I go before you. I grieve, my father and mother, that I have to leave you behind me, now that you are growing older. In your old age you will miss me. I could have done something in return for all you have done for me. ’Tis all Heaven’s decree, and I must go.’

If Christianity taught us to be stewards of our wealth, Bushido taught us to be stewards of our health; and if Christianity taught that our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, Bushido learned from Shintoism that in our tenement of clay is a divine immanence. I do not mean by this that Bushido was deistic, much less can I affirm that it was monotheistic. It was too honest and too practical to invent a theological system. ‘Man projects, as it were,’ says a recent writer, ‘a mighty shadow of himself and calls it God.’ The strength and weakness of Bushido lay in its possessing no dogmatic creed. It sufficed its votaries only to feel that there was something in their mind—the mysteries of which they little cared to analyze—always active with admonitions, which, when disobeyed, heaped upon the transgressors fiery coals of shame, and which could only be appeased by implicit obedience. In the absence of any written commandments, the Ren-chi-shin (consciousness of shame) was the last and highest court of appeal. A man who had lost his sense of shame forfeited his humane claims.

While Bushido took strong cognizance of the god-like man, it did not overlook his animal nature. As said one of our poets: ‘Should men speak of the Evil One, thou wilt laugh in their faces: what if thou hadst asked thy own heart?’ I need not add that this belief in the dual nature of man was not necessarily self-contradictory. From the Pauline doctrine that it is the law which makes sin manifest, it follows that the more stringent and exacting the law, the more manifest the sin. The clearer one’s conscience, the keener his sense of shame—