It is almost axiomatic that the ethical ob ligations of any social, exclusive class show wider divergencies than the laws of morality which unite man to the world in general ; in other words, a class such as the samurai has a very high conception of some responsibilities and yet it may tolerate the most lax ideas in others. It cannot he denied, as Crozier says in his 'Civilization and Progress,' that °the code of honor which regulated the inter course of the upper classes in the old aristoc racies had much more influence on their con duct than the ten commandments.• The strength and weakness of any class morality lie just here, and this is true of Bushido. In its eagerness to foster the masculine vir tues, it neglected the proper education of the gentle sex; in its one-sided appreciation of military valor it discarded industrial worth; in its exaltation of samurai prerogative it set at naught the commonest rights of the plebeian order. But it is not the shortcomings of Bu shido which have impressed the nation, bet its practical precepts. What is deficient and defective in this moral regime can be remedied and supplied by the growth of democracy, which is irresistible, whereas the qualities it has impressed upon the nation are such as cannot easily be promoted by democratic insti tutions. To give a few of the more prominent moral sentiments particularly cherished by Bushido, we will briefly describe its sense of honor.
In Japan it is more usual to employ the word renchi-shin (literally, the sense of shame) as equivalent to the sense of honor, which characterizes every repertoire of knightly yir-, tues. The worst thing which could be affirmed of a samurai was that he knew' not shame. The two conceptions of honor and shame are so intimately allied that they not only seem inseparable but the reverse and obverse of the same thing. Honor sounds like an accretion gained over and above one's ordinary lot, and shame savors of something of which one is deprived. Shame• is a painful sensation which. accompanies the knowledge .of guilt. It is what Kant would call the natural and immedi ate punishment for one's own conscious com mission of sin or omission of duty. It is the self-knowledge of disturbed moral equipoise, and the more perfect the balance the more sensitive is it to the slightest disorder. Shame is the most delicate index of moral health, and the bushi was required to distinguish what constitutes shame and to avoid it. Like the English word shame, kaji means first of all a painful sensation excited by a consciousness of guilt or impropriety, in which case it was a spiritual experience of an individual, irre spective of his relation to others; but it also means, secondarily, reproach or contempt in curred from outside.
It may be asked by what standard was the guilt or innocence of a deed, involving honor or shame, to be decided. A deed or thought that in the least clouded the lustre of the im maculate mirror of the mind was forthwith deemed shame. This simple faith in human. nature was accepted as an axiomatic truth, no attempt being made to demonstrate it philosophically or theologically. Shame, there
fore, was not explained; it was to be felt and avoided. As to honor,— the opposite of shame, — it was identified with a. good name, and hence with reputation and fame. The error into which• young samurai fell so easily and so naturally was to confound these and to en deavor to acquire name — rather fame — by means of any sort. Hence emulation and rivalry sometimes went beyond the limits of common sense and wisdom. Another danger to which samurai youths were exposed was a false sense of shame—malus pudor. Misfortunes which could be rationally explained, or in Western lands would be termed "acts of Providence,D were often construed as deeds for which the in dividuals concerned held themselves responsible, and so many a useful. life found a self-sought end. We are disposed to think that the em phasis placed on conscience as the criterion for honor or shame, for virtue or vice, for good or evil — sharing as it does the practical doc trines of Socrates and the mystic tenets of Jacob Boehme and George Fox — was on the whole a healthy and beautiful teaching to fol low, being based on the very root of moral consciousness.
The exaltation of benevolence was a logi cal outcome of a practical accompaniment of a sense of shame. Malice would be. fatal to the highest instinct of honor, benevolence alone being consistent with it. By benevolence it meant love commingled with pity and mercy, which one feels toward one s inferiors. It was par excellence a virtue of princes. They represented divine powers, ruling over their subjects with authority derived from This theocratic idea explains the comparative beneficence of the feudal regime. Paternal government was also based on the assumption that the ruler mediates between heaven and man, and .thought weakness of the system is apparent, it must be borne in mind that ab solutism and feudalism were largely built on moral principles. Benevolence, however, was not altogether to be confined to the rulers. Every samurai was to be mindful of it in his transactions with his inferiors, with the weak er sex and with weaker men — with defeated enemies. It was considered disgraceful in samurai to take advantage of the weakness of others. Strategy and ruse de guerre were of course entirely justified in warfare; but even then some warriors went so far as to give ample opportunities to their enemies for due preparation. In private life, too, benevolence and the gentle virtues — magnanimity, forgive ness, mercy and pity—were ever extolled as befitting the noble occupation of the samurai. "Superior men hate sins but not the glance' said Confucius. It may not be amiss to ob serve here that the religious instinct of Japan, as expressed in Shintoism, never invented a• hell, though it looked for a spacious firmament as an abiding place for the souls of the dead. In fact it has rarely spoken of sin except as defilement or contamination.