The Teutonic races beginning their tribal life with a superstitious awe of the fair sex (though this is really wearing off in Germany!), and the Americans beginning their social life under the painful consciousness of the numerical insufficiency of women[26] (who, now increasing, are, I am afraid, fast losing the prestige their colonial mothers enjoyed), the respect man pays to woman has in Western civilization become the chief standard of morality.  But in the martial ethics of Bushido, the main water-shed dividing the good and the bad was sought elsewhere.  It was located along the line of duty which bound man to his own divine soul and then to other souls, in the five relations I have mentioned in the early part of this paper.  Of these we have brought to our reader’s notice, Loyalty, the relation between one man as vassal and another as lord.  Upon the rest, I have only dwelt incidentally as occasion presented itself; because they were not peculiar to Bushido.  Being founded on natural affections, they could but be common to all mankind, though in some particulars they may have been accentuated by conditions which its teachings induced.  In this connection, there comes before me the peculiar strength and tenderness of friendship between man and man, which often added to the bond of brotherhood a romantic attachment doubtless intensified by the separation of the sexes in youth,—­a separation which denied to affection the natural channel open to it in Western chivalry or in the free intercourse of Anglo-Saxon lands.  I might fill pages with Japanese versions of the story of Damon and Pythias or Achilles and Patroclos, or tell in Bushido parlance of ties as sympathetic as those which bound David and Jonathan.

[Footnote 26:  I refer to those days when girls were imported from England and given in marriage for so many pounds of tobacco, etc.]

It is not surprising, however, that the virtues and teachings unique in the Precepts of Knighthood did not remain circumscribed to the military class.  This makes us hasten to the consideration of

THE INFLUENCE OF BUSHIDO

on the nation at large.

We have brought into view only a few of the more prominent peaks which rise above the range of knightly virtues, in themselves so much more elevated than the general level of our national life.  As the sun in its rising first tips the highest peaks with russet hue, and then gradually casts its rays on the valley below, so the ethical system which first enlightened the military order drew in course of time followers from amongst the masses.  Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people.  Virtues are no less contagious than vices.  “There needs but one wise man in a company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion,” says Emerson.  No social class or caste can resist the diffusive power of moral influence.