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Emperor, in his speech at Coblenz, reminded himself and his people of the ‘Kingship by the Grace of God, with its grave duties, its tremendous responsibility to the Creator alone, from which no man, no minister, no parliament, can release the Monarch,’ and the so-called medieval strain sounded as if it had the same origin as the Bushido conception of moral duty. Benevolence and Magnanimity, the generous virtues, were derived, says Reade in a book from which I have quoted before (‘The Order of Moral Evolution’), from parental love, and hence a sovereign, who held in his hand the patria potestas over millions, was expected above all to prize and practise these virtues.

When a ruler is actuated by a lofty sense of the functions of his office as powers entrusted to him from above, there remains nothing higher for his subjects than to support him with all the obedience compatible with their duties to their own consciences. Bushido was thus like Christianity, a doctrine of duty and service. The governing and the governed were alike taught to serve a higher end, and to that end to sacrifice themselves. Did a monarch behave badly, Bushido did not lay before the suffering people the panacea of a good government by regicide. In all the forty-five centuries during which Japan has passed through many vicissitudes of national existence, no blot of the death of a Charles I. or a Louis XVI. ever stained the pages of her history. Did ever a Nero or a Caligula sit upon our throne? I have grounds for discrediting the story of Yuriaku’s atrocities and Buretsu’s brutalities.

The love that we bear to our Emperor naturally brings with it a love for the country over which he reigns. Hence our sentiment of patriotism—I will not call it a duty, for, as Dr. Samuel Johnson rightly suggests, patriotism is a sentiment and is more than a duty—I say our patriotism is fed by two streams of sentiment, namely, that of personal love to the monarch, and of our common love for the soil which gave us birth and provides us with hearth and home. Nay, there is another source from which our patriotism is fed: it is that the land guards in its bosom the bones of our fathers; and here I may dwell awhile upon our Filial Piety.

Parental love man possesses in common with the beasts, but filial love is little found among animals after they are weaned. Was it the last of the virtues to develop in the order of ethical evolution? Whatever its origin, Mr. Herbert Spencer evidently thinks it is a waning trait in an evolving humanity; and I am aware that everywhere there are signs of its giving way to individualism and egotism; especially does this seem to be the case in Christendom. Christianity, by which I do not mean what Jesus of Nazareth taught, but a