If Bushido rejects a doctrine of quid pro quo rewards, the shrewder tradesman will readily accept it.  Lecky has very truly remarked that Veracity owes its growth largely to commerce and manufacture; as Nietzsche puts it, “Honesty is the youngest of virtues”—­in other words, it is the foster-child of industry, of modern industry.  Without this mother, Veracity was like a blue-blood orphan whom only the most cultivated mind could adopt and nourish.  Such minds were general among the samurai, but, for want of a more democratic and utilitarian foster-mother, the tender child failed to thrive.  Industries advancing, Veracity will prove an easy, nay, a profitable, virtue to practice.  Just think, as late as November 1880, Bismarck sent a circular to the professional consuls of the German Empire, warning them of “a lamentable lack of reliability with regard to German shipments inter alia, apparent both as to quality and quantity;” now-a-days we hear comparatively little of German carelessness and dishonesty in trade.  In twenty years her merchants learned that in the end honesty pays.  Already our merchants are finding that out.  For the rest I recommend the reader to two recent writers for well-weighed judgment on this point.[15] It is interesting to remark in this connection that integrity and honor were the surest guaranties which even a merchant debtor could present in the form of promissory notes.  It was quite a usual thing to insert such clauses as these:  “In default of the repayment of the sum lent to me, I shall say nothing against being ridiculed in public;” or, “In case I fail to pay you back, you may call me a fool,” and the like.

[Footnote 15:  Knapp, Feudal and Modern Japan, Vol.  I, Ch.  IV.  Ransome, Japan in Transition, Ch.  VIII.]

Often have I wondered whether the Veracity of Bushido had any motive higher than courage.  In the absence of any positive commandment against bearing false witness, lying was not condemned as sin, but simply denounced as weakness, and, as such, highly dishonorable.  As a matter of fact, the idea of honesty is so intimately blended, and its Latin and its German etymology so identified with

HONOR,

that it is high time I should pause a few moments for the consideration of this feature of the Precepts of Knighthood.

The sense of honor, implying a vivid consciousness of personal dignity and worth, could not fail to characterize the samurai, born and bred to value the duties and privileges of their profession.  Though the word ordinarily given now-a-days as the translation of Honor was not used freely, yet the idea was conveyed by such terms as na (name) men-moku (countenance), guai-bun (outside hearing), reminding us respectively of the biblical use of “name,” of the evolution of the term “personality” from the Greek mask, and of “fame.”  A good name—­one’s