lucre.  The hackneyed expression to describe the decadence of an age is “that the civilians loved money and the soldiers feared death.”  Niggardliness of gold and of life excites as much disapprobation as their lavish use is panegyrized.  “Less than all things,” says a current precept, “men must grudge money:  it is by riches that wisdom is hindered.”  Hence children were brought up with utter disregard of economy.  It was considered bad taste to speak of it, and ignorance of the value of different coins was a token of good breeding.  Knowledge of numbers was indispensable in the mustering of forces as well, as in the distribution of benefices and fiefs; but the counting of money was left to meaner hands.  In many feudatories, public finance was administered by a lower kind of samurai or by priests.  Every thinking bushi knew well enough that money formed the sinews of war; but he did not think of raising the appreciation of money to a virtue.  It is true that thrift was enjoined by Bushido, but not for economical reasons so much as for the exercise of abstinence.  Luxury was thought the greatest menace to manhood, and severest simplicity was required of the warrior class, sumptuary laws being enforced in many of the clans.

We read that in ancient Rome the farmers of revenue and other financial agents were gradually raised to the rank of knights, the State thereby showing its appreciation of their service and of the importance of money itself.  How closely this was connected with the luxury and avarice of the Romans may be imagined.  Not so with the Precepts of Knighthood.  These persisted in systematically regarding finance as something low—­low as compared with moral and intellectual vocations.

Money and the love of it being thus diligently ignored, Bushido itself could long remain free from a thousand and one evils of which money is the root.  This is sufficient reason for the fact that our public men have long been free from corruption; but, alas, how fast plutocracy is making its way in our time and generation!

The mental discipline which would now-a-days be chiefly aided by the study of mathematics, was supplied by literary exegesis and deontological discussions.  Very few abstract subjects troubled the mind of the young, the chief aim of their education being, as I have said, decision of character.  People whose minds were simply stored with information found no great admirers.  Of the three services of studies that Bacon gives,—­for delight, ornament, and ability,—­Bushido had decided preference for the last, where their use was “in judgment and the disposition of business.”  Whether it was for the disposition of public business or for the exercise of self-control, it was with a practical end in view that education was conducted.  “Learning without thought,” said Confucius, “is labor lost:  thought without learning is perilous.”