When character and not intelligence, when the soul and not the head, is chosen by a teacher for the material to work upon and to develop, his vocation partakes of a sacred character.  “It is the parent who has borne me:  it is the teacher who makes me man.”  With this idea, therefore, the esteem in which one’s preceptor was held was very high.  A man to evoke such confidence and respect from the young, must necessarily be endowed with superior personality without lacking erudition.  He was a father to the fatherless, and an adviser to the erring.  “Thy father and thy mother”—­so runs our maxim—­“are like heaven and earth; thy teacher and thy lord are like the sun and moon.”

The present system of paying for every sort of service was not in vogue among the adherents of Bushido.  It believed in a service which can be rendered only without money and without price.  Spiritual service, be it of priest or teacher, was not to be repaid in gold or silver, not because it was valueless but because it was invaluable.  Here the non-arithmetical honor-instinct of Bushido taught a truer lesson than modern Political Economy; for wages and salaries can be paid only for services whose results are definite, tangible, and measurable, whereas the best service done in education,—­namely, in soul development (and this includes the services of a pastor), is not definite, tangible or measurable.  Being immeasurable, money, the ostensible measure of value, is of inadequate use.  Usage sanctioned that pupils brought to their teachers money or goods at different seasons of the year; but these were not payments but offerings, which indeed were welcome to the recipients as they were usually men of stern calibre, boasting of honorable penury, too dignified to work with their hands and too proud to beg.  They were grave personifications of high spirits undaunted by adversity.  They were an embodiment of what was considered as an end of all learning, and were thus a living example of that discipline of disciplines,

SELF-CONTROL,

which was universally required of samurai.

The discipline of fortitude on the one hand, inculcating endurance without a groan, and the teaching of politeness on the other, requiring us not to mar the pleasure or serenity of another by manifestations of our own sorrow or pain, combined to engender a stoical turn of mind, and eventually to confirm it into a national trait of apparent stoicism.  I say apparent stoicism, because I do not believe that true stoicism can ever become the characteristic of a whole nation, and also because some of our national manners and customs may seem to a foreign observer hard-hearted.  Yet we are really as susceptible to tender emotion as any race under the sky.

I am inclined to think that in one sense we have to feel more than others—­yes, doubly more—­since the very attempt to, restrain natural promptings entails suffering.  Imagine boys—­and girls too—­brought up not to resort to the shedding of a tear or the uttering of a groan for the relief of their feelings,—­and there is a physiological problem whether such effort steels their nerves or makes them more sensitive.